You’ve probably heard the story of the man in New York City who told his wife he was just going out for a newspaper and it’s been twenty years since she last saw him. My reaction to the story has always hinged on the kind of people they were. I mean if he was a rotten bastard, then I say she’s been better off without him. On the other hand, if she was a shrew, then I say good on you mate, you’ve escaped.

But let’s look at this logically. Where the hell did he go? One theory that we can discount fairly quickly, is that he was abducted by aliens. We are certain that can’t be true, because aliens favor midwesterners and have almost no use for a jaded New Yorker.

Next theory is that he met up with friends, sat in on a poker game, and lost track of time. When he realized how late it was, he was too embarassed to call home or show up with his tail between his legs, so he started a new life in Albany with all the money he won at poker (good thing he had brought his wallet with him).

Speaking of wallets, another possibility is that he went down to the news stand with just a few dollars and no identification. He was then hit by a cab (happens all the time in New York city) and suffered amnesia. No one knew him and since there was no ID, the police had nothing to go on. Now here’s where it gets interesting. What if his wife didn’t miss him. I mean she knew that he didn’t come back, but she took it as a message from God that it was a good time to continue her life without him. Since he never went to a dentist in his life and worked from home, they had no way to identify him, and despite the repeated printing of his photo in the newspaper, no one could (or WOULD) identify him.

An interesting variation on this scenario is that he bought the paper and while reading it on the way back to his apartment, he stepped in an open manhole. It had been raining heavily all morning and the heavy current carried him to the East River (drowned by that point) and ultimately into Raritan Bay bound for the Jersey shore.

Another theory that many people like is that he had been planning this escape for quite some time. He had stashed away money in a separate bank account and had his passport and everything he needed to make his getaway. The plan was to take a cab to the Port Authority, get a bus to Newark, catch a flight to Buenos Aires, and from there he became a gaucho on a cattle ranch. I saved this theory for last because it is my personal favorite. Walking away from a life and a wife to become a gaucho? I like to think that one day he woke up and realized that herding cattle in Argentina was his destiny, and he had to heed the call. Vamos amigos!

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.

Everyone said just wait until retirement, when you’ll be spending all your time together driving each other nuts. There’s some truth to the prophecy, but we’ve been working our way through it and doing quite nicely. The driving part is where we get into trouble.

Much of our marital success can be attributed to spending time away from each other. Our love of food and cooking puts us in the kitchen a lot but not usually together. I do most of the housework, so there’s a fun solo activity for me. Dale tends to the yard, barely, but I’m still giving him points for keeping me out of it. I play golf and am sucked down that shame spiral two to three days a week.

All that aside, we are emotionally attached at the core and cannot imagine the day when one of us has to go it alone. But the truth is, we actually don’t need much togetherness. Maybe it’s the secret to our 40-year marriage. We each have our own interests, sometimes they align, and if they don’t, we meet up for happy hour in the living room and swap stories.

But then there are the together days. A trip to the market, the library or a local winery. Road trips. This is where driving issues emerge, and I’m the first one to admit I’m a huge part of the problem. It’s not that I’m a better driver, it’s that I’m a terrible passenger seat driver.

Why would you park in that spot when there’s a better one over there?

Slow down! It’s not a race.

Are you sure you parked inside the lines?

Watch out – there’s a car in the next lane!

Something’s going on up ahead – you’d better slow down.

Oh, don’t turn left here. Go up to the next light, where there’s an arrow.

I do trust Dale’s driving. It’s mostly my neurosis at play, but wheeee goes against all I stand for when it comes to interacting with a motorized vehicle. Still, I have worked hard to zip it, and Dale agrees I am much better. Now, if I start to say something, I catch myself and stop. Unless, of course, it’s a speak up or die kind of thing.

This morning’s paper had a column on driving with one finger on the wheel – one of Dale’s signature moves. I use one finger, too, but it’s the middle one, pointed straight up.

I hate being a harpy, but then I believe every bridge, every overpass, every onramp, is an invitation to death. I marked up the article when I was done with that section and left it there. Came upstairs and sat down at my computer, when I heard this big laugh. I said, “What’s so funny?” He said, “Oh, the subtle message. Thanks.”

You’re welcome! That’s retirement, I thought, just trying to live through it.

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

On a warm March day, Felicia and I drive to Kathy’s new house for lunch. We used to live in the same town, but Kathy recently moved twenty miles away. We used to be a solid threesome, unlikely friends in some ways yet consistent in our joys and affection. Then Kathy cut herself off, pronouncing us trivial, gossipy, hypocritical. She recently moved to mend the split, apologizing and explaining it was all her fault, her stuff.

Arriving at her house, we hug and admire the new place. We enjoy the burritos she made and the brownies we brought while catching up on our families, and our plans for the coming months. After lunch, we set out on a walk of the neighborhood. Sixteen years ago, our hikes were daylong treks in our nearby National Forest that would include lunch, and maybe champagne. We would joke about duct taping handsome men to trees so we could have our way with them. But on this day, it’s just the neighborhood we want to explore.

We walk past houses built in the 1940’s and 50’s. We see goats in one yard, purple and pink crocuses in another. We come to a busy thoroughfare and walk back down through a park. We pass a woman who exclaims we have beautiful hair. She must mean the varying shades of silver mixed with the brown, our windblown strands catching in our mouths.

Back on the street, we walk along a fast-flowing creek. A cyclist speeds down the hill, causing us to scurry out of his way. We enter a greenway, muddy in places, and pass joggers, other walkers, and kids smoking pot. We talk about books, our children, our men, and how hard it is to get old and see your friends die off.

“It will happen to us,” Felicia says. “One of us will die first and the other two will be left to deal with it.”

“Yeah, but studies show that friendships keep us healthy and more likely to live a long time,” I add.

The afternoon gets late. Our hair smells like the wind and our jeans are mud-spattered. Circling back to Kathy’s house, we hug again and part ways.

Backing out of Kathy’s driveway, I turn to Felicia. “It’s good, isn’t it? We have it back.”

“Yes,” she agrees, as we pull away and give Kathy one last wave.

Lee Stevens is from Hendersonville, North Carolina

Why did I go into the living room? I was perfectly happy in my study behind the computer. Did I need something in the living room? Was it a thing, a coat, a sweater, a magazine? If I retrace my steps back to the study, maybe that will jog my memory. No, that didn’t work. Something in my mind told me to go to the living room, but on the way there, I forgot the reason.

The solution is to write it down before you leave on the fool’s errand of going after something you are going to forget on your way to get it. Now I find myself writing Post-Its that say “get newspaper,” “get out hammer,” “moves clothes from washer to dryer,” etc. The drawback with this system is that my scrawled printing is so pathetic that I often cannot read my own notes. I can stare at “hawg pc” for hours before remembering that I was supposed to put up a newly framed picture (“hang pic”).

So we make lists. We have grocery lists, task lists, gift lists, weekend lists, job lists, fix-it lists, wake up and do lists, and today lists. God help you if you go off without your list. Freelancing in the grocery store is not a great idea. Sure, you get some of the usual things that you know you always get, but you come home without the eggs that you needed for the baking you wanted to do, which is why you went there in the first place.

I know that it’s natural for short-term memory to degrade, but that doesn’t make me any more cheerful when I fail to pull a name from my random access memory (RAM), which is what I call the place where my brain stores everything I need to solve a crossword puzzle. There’s erg for unit of work, Oona for Charlie Chaplain’s wife, Erato for sister of Clio, élan for pizzazz, and literally thousands more. Unfortunately, the instant recall button doesn’t work as well as it once did, which means I’m leaving a dent in my forehead from where I slap it every time I say, “I knew that.”

It’s not unusual to waste my waking hours (and maybe a few of the ones when I’m sleeping) repeatedly trying to jog my memory so that I can think of someone’s name. I can picture them, maybe even remember the spouse’s name, but all else eludes me.

At this point, I would be happy to take a pill if it solved the problem, but I know that it will come with a list of side effects, such as headache; loss of appetite; stuffy or runny nose; and of course, the dreaded “loss of short-term memory.”

I know there is a reason why I shouldn’t take a pill like that, but I can’t remember what it is and I didn’t make a list.

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.

Nearly every day I tell myself how happy I am to be retired. I don’t miss my job. The nest egg is in good shape, I have lots of hobbies and am having fun. However, at times I miss feeling successful.

The thing is, I never achieved the level of success I aspired to, so I’m not sure what I am missing. I did very well in my career over the long haul and found satisfaction in knowing I used my skills well and accomplished more than anyone else expected of me. Still, I left some opportunity on the table.

Should I go back to work? I looked at jobs online today to see if anything sounded interesting. I saw one job requiring “grit” and “a nearly insane level of attention to detail.” Sure, that could be me on a good day. More than likely it’s not.

Reading through job descriptions, there’s strong demand for passionate self-starters who can roll up their sleeves and collaborate with a fast-paced global team. I used to write this crap – and reading it now cured me of the itch to find a job.

Perhaps it’s not the feeling of success I miss but the feeling of knowing what success looked like. In the workplace, the path to success is mostly linear, and it points up.

That seemed doable to me, so I set my eyes on the prize and worked hard. Sometimes I fell short of my hopes and dreams, and other times I wildly exceeded even my own expectations. But I had the map, I had a compass and I stayed on the trail. There were prizes along the way and incentives to keep going.

By the time I retired, I had lots of prizes, but my bullshit meter was pegged.

In a career limiting development, these days there’s not much of a gap between my inside voice and my outside voice. I wanted to do something different with the last third of my life anyway, so I retired as soon as the math worked out.

I’m coming up on the one-year mark, and I’ve learned retirement doesn’t come with a map or compass. Many of us traded our talents for money and security. I certainly did, and I have no regrets. But I am still driven to reach my full potential, whatever that is, and now I have to figure it out all by my own self. I have a feeling I’m not alone.

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