BoomSpeak

What Guilt?

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phonograph needleI was reading about retirement the other day. Could mean I’ve been thinking about it. Although now that I’ve read what some people say about retiring, it’s tweaked my contrarian side. One particular writer advised that by retiring, I would be giving a younger person an opportunity to take on more responsibility. Okay, that’s fine by me. They continued by adding that the younger person would get a promotion and make more money. That’s fine as well. Therefore, she/he concluded, retirement is really an act of generosity, so don’t feel guilty about it.

Guilty!! My reaction? Hit the play button below.

What the hell did he/she just say? Don’t feel guilty about retiring? Nuts to that. Guilt is the last thing I would feel on the way out the door. I’ve been working since I was 12 years old. Helping out in Dad’s business, working summers to pay for college, working in several careers and then co-founding a business that’s about to start its 35th year.

I get that there will be a period of adjustment when the time comes. That’s why I’ve decided to ease out the door by remaining a consultant for a few years. But the pressure to start the day by checking client emails and formulating a work plan will be over. No more reacting to weekend work requests. It will be more about what I want to do that day and having a more relaxed attitude about what needs to get done versus what I’d like to do. The weekdays should melt into the weekend, so that eventually, I hope, I can’t tell the difference.

My Type A personality is not going to give way overnight, but I’m hoping some Type B traits will leach in somehow. At the very least, I’m hoping to have fewer and less frequent To Do lists. Then again, if you have a lot of free time on your hands, a To Do list might be just the ticket.

Guilt? I don’t think so. Paid my dues, put in my time. Soon, most of the time will be mine.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

Letters

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alphabet lettersMy brother recently sent me some letters I wrote to him in the 1980s. Back then I wrote letters all the time – to my parents, other siblings, friends. It was what people did, in addition to periodic long-distance phone calls on our land lines. Even my children, both Millennials, wrote me letters during their college years, but those letters gradually evolved into emails. Today, in the midst of their busy adult lives, we text, call, or FaceTime more often than we email.

I don’t want to be an elder who laments the better ways of the old days. Our current methods allow immediate contact, and sometimes a brief exchange of texts is all we need to be in touch. But as Simon Garfield asked in his 2013 book “To the Letter: A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing,” how will we be able to tell our history without letters?

As I read over the letters my brother sent, I see how rich my relationship was with my two year-old son, a bond that continues to this day. I also see how I was in denial about the depth of my husband’s issues underlying his habit of consuming too much alcohol away from home. My brother expressed concern and suggested he seek counseling; I told him we had it under control and he shouldn’t judge my husband. How wrong I was in that. So I gained something from rereading those letters – I could reexperience so much good and also learn something about myself that my memories have hidden.

One thing that is better now – we are more aware and open about addiction and mental health challenges and we are more fluent in the language of emotions. We can talk things through better, whether in person or other means. We can access resources and information over the internet, and more easily gain a sense that we are not alone in whatever issues we face. I wish I had had those resources back then.

I treasure the letters I wrote back then because they help me understand my history, but I don’t mourn the loss of the letter writing habit. However, this past summer when my 10 year-old grandson was at sleepover camp for the first time, I wrote him weekly letters, perhaps the only ones he’ll ever receive. Maybe I’ll continue that habit with him and his younger brother.

Lee Stevens is an aging Conjuress who spins magic with words and yarn in Hendersonville, North Carolina

 

Crumbs

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chocolate chip cookie and crumbsI am biting into a cookie. Chocolate chip. This is back before cookies were soft and pliant and there would be no crumbs falling to the kitchen floor, linoleum covered with the faint of yellow wax.

It is Tuesday, and my father is late for dinner again. Outside the window, beyond the orange flower curtains, the trees are green and budding. It is April, and everything is young.

I hear the hallway door slam open; an umbrella being stabbed into the stand. It didn’t rain the way mother insisted it would.

I am biting into a cookie when the shadow that is my father walks in. My mother has taken the broom from the closet and is sweeping crumbs into the dustbin. She is kneeling to get the smallest crumbs, and turns her head startled towards my father.

I am biting into a cookie and my mouth freezes open into a cave as my father pulls my mother up by the collar of her flowered housedress. I’ve seen this before. His arm above his head. Tornado in his fist.

My mouth closes around a scream as he lets go of her and crumbles into himself, his arm falling to his side. His face as purple and twisted as a howl.

The grass outside a shiver in the wind, the only sound until the hee-haw of the ambulance whooshing up the street. My mother lifting up my father’s face, brushing crumbs off of his cheek, sweeping everything off to the side.

Francine Witte from New York City

 

FAKE!

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fish pretending to be sharkIt would be one thing if baby boomers read things on the internet and recognized them as fake news, but you have to blame certain politicians for turning everything they don’t want to hear into fake news.

Now for some true news. Guess who the biggest fake news spreaders are? Give up? Baby boomers, my friends, are fertilizing the infosphere with erroneous information at a rate greater than any other demographic. Sad but true, older Americans are more likely to share articles from fake news domains and disreputable sources. Researchers looking at 2016 Facebook posts found little sharing of fake articles excepting persons over 65. The Social Media and Political Participation Lab and Princeton University, found that on average, users over 65 shared nearly seven times as many articles from fake news domains as the youngest age group did.

How do you explain the boomer propensity to share false articles? Perhaps they think naively believe if it shows up on Facebook it must be true. They must not have alternative news sources by which they could fact check what they are reading in order to become more discerning. Another theory is that they are just lazy. They read something that is what they want to believe and have no inclination to follow up to ascertain if it’s true. A third, and more ominous possibility, is that they know it’s false but just want to pass it off as true to piss people off. I could surmise what political affiliation some boomers might have if they fall into this last category, but that just might be fake news as well. Last, but not least, there’s the theory that boomers have just gotten dumber. The bullshit meter just doesn’t work like it used to, sad but too true.

Come on boomers! You’re better than this! You were part of the generation that marched for an end to the Vietnam war. You protested and marched for civil rights legislation. You are supposed to speak truth to power, not share lies and bullshit. There’s enough fakes (people and ideas) in our world right now. Boomers ought to take some pride in having enough sense not to spread falsity and make it worse.

And proud at least to not be as bad as the Russians.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

Climbing Mountains

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On the entertainment front, I watched a movie on Amazon Prime called, “Edie.” It’s about an 83-year-old woman in England who feels she wasted her life and now wants to climb a mountain in Scotland. It made me wonder about the definition of a wasted life.

Unlike Edie, I’ve gone after almost everything I wanted in life. However, in the grand scheme of things, I haven’t accomplished much. I consider making enough money to retire my greatest achievement. And here I am approaching 65, piddling around and relishing in simple pleasures.

I guess you could say the slacker retirement model works for me … at least for now. I am the happiest I’ve been. I don’t miss my career. I enjoy how I spend my time on the planet. Of course, the go-go model is another option, but I see that as just another race, only the rats are different.

But never say never. I suspect we experience different phases throughout retirement. Three years in, I might still be in my nesting phase, but something might switch over, and I’ll wake up wanting to climb that mountain. If we’re lucky, we get to make choices along the way.

I asked Dale what he thought, and his response was so profound I immediately ran to get a piece of paper and pen to write it down, but by the time I returned, we could barely reconstruct what he said. It was something like this:

If you can do what makes you happy and help people along the way, then that is a life well-lived.

Pretty good, yes?

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

Going, Going, Gone

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Sitting outside the Starbucks on Taylor street in Chicago’s Little Italy, I sip my latte macchiato. Something is missing but I can’t put my finger on it. I grew up here as a kid and it’s always nice to get back. Snag a plate of spaghetti and neck bones at Pompei. Buy a cannoli at Scafuri’s. But sometimes I just like to sit and watch the people coming and going. None of them look especially Italian. But then maybe Little Italy is just a brand, a PR name like Harlem in New York or Cork Town in Detroit. Little Italy—another ethnic meatball floating in Chicago’s melting pot.  A guy shows up. Plaid shorts hanging over his knees, belly hanging over his belt and a boy, maybe 8, holding his hand. He stands at the raised garden, a circle of bushes in the middle of the sidewalk. He looks around. Spots me under the umbrella.

“Hey!” he goes, “where’s DiMagg?”

That’s what’s missing. There used to be a statue of Joe DiMaggio in the middle of the flower bed. I shrug. Shake my head.

“I bring my grandson all the way from Peoria to see something Italian, something to be proud of, an he ain’t here. What the hell? I tried to tell the kid, he was famous. Great ball player. Joltin’ Joe. The Yankee Clipper.”

I nod, thinking, yeah he was a great athlete. Set some kind of hitting streak record. But he didn’t play for the White Sox did he? A New York Yankee right in the middle of Sox country. So what if he was Italian? Everybody’s something. What did he ever do for Chicago…baseball, yeah… but for Chicago? I’m not going to argue with the guy. Embarrass him in front of his kid. Anyhow, I’d have to interrupt him shouting, waving hands, “What the hell. They’re taking down statues all over the place. What’s this country coming to? You can’t even give a kid something to hang onto, his tradition. C’mon Mario let’s go to Arrigo Park. At least they got the Christopher Columbus statue there.”

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

 

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