It’s not that I don’t have a retirement strategy; it’s that my plan is a bit unconventional and it isn’t working out. I know what a 401K is, sort of, but I’ve never personally owned one. Also, the last thing I rolled over was myself, from one side of the bed to the other. It didn’t occur to me that I’d have to concern myself with such matters because I expected to expire at the onset of middle age – the result of a massive and well-deserved coronary.
This plan was firmly rooted in Doyle ancestral history. The women in my family lived long lives. They married early and often, while most of their male counterparts shuffled off this mortal coil some twenty to thirty years earlier than their spouses. Their Irish appreciation for the grape coupled with scant affection for healthy foods and exercise further compromised an already weak genetic structure.
So I came by my retirement strategy reasonably and honestly. I would spend every nickel I ever got hold of (and then some) because grappling with an unlikely “future” seemed to me a waste of effort. A tad extreme, perhaps, but consider the advantages: I would have enjoyed my life’s income to the fullest. My wife would likely remarry, but I’d never have to think about her and a younger, more virile man spending my hard earned dollars. My kids would gain moral strength by having to support themselves, rather than freeloading off the old man into their thirties and forties. I’d have the inexpressible joy of stiffing my creditors on my way out the door. And on the day of my death the last time I would have defecated in my pants would be fifty years ago instead of yesterday.
It’s a good plan but, as I say, it isn’t working out and I feel ill used by fate. Edging toward retirement age, I face the prospect of actually having to consume my just desserts. I find myself going out of my way to avoid flights of stairs and remote parking sites. I am at risk of becoming “the old guy” at work. My witty flirtations are starting to be viewed as the stuff of sexual harassment. Soon people will be offering to help me with my bags and telling me how lucky I am to still have my hair. My doctor takes endless pleasure in pointing out my excesses and their inevitable dreary results. The guys doing the Viagra ads on TV are, all of a sudden, younger than I am. I tell you, it is not a pretty picture.
I am surrounded by industrious ants that have been toiling away while I fiddled and mocked them. Cops and firemen and congressmen from my birth cohort are ten years into their second careers with condos in Florida and land in North Carolina.
My corporate brothers and sisters’ servitude has been longer, but it’s still finite. Sixty, sixty-two, sixty-five… All you have to do to enter that blessed realm of flush retirement is to endure. And, my God, how these ants love to talk endlessly about their hard work and planning! Stocks, bonds, annuities, interest rates, and long-term growth. The only stock I’ve ever owned has been able to walk around on four legs. Could somebody tell me what the hell the Nikkei is and why I should care? Not to mention the ants’ odious sense of moral superiority.
My life can only get worse. I’m looking for a respectable way out of my first taste of cat food.
If I was part of an Eskimo society, I could simply find a spot on a small ice floe and have my next of kin push me into the bay. If I made my living hunting, a wild animal would eventually grant me an honorable discharge. If I had amassed great wealth I might expect to breathe my last under a strategically placed pillow held in place by an impatient heir.
There is hope, of course, that my exit strategy will work out yet. I continue to eat poorly and avoid exercise. A full blown nuclear exchange seems unlikely at this point, but terrorism may yet do me in. I consume mercury and absorb asbestos at ruinous levels. In the meantime I am at work, straining into the traces and wondering where I went wrong. I just hate it when a plan doesn’t come together.
Kent Doyle is a fifty-something divorced bachelor living aboard a 44-foot trawler on the Jersey side New York Harbor with his two canine companions: Lucy and Mr. Hudson. He has built hang gliders in Buffalo, run a car company in the West Indies, and written software in Manhattan without distinguishing himself at any enterprise. Kent can be reached at: doyle@wavestation.com.
Illustrated by Ira Blutreich
