Every seventeen and eighteen year old has heard them. “Where are you going to college?” “What are you going to do when you grow up?” Their parents, their teachers, their friends’ parents, their parents’ friends, and even strangers ask them to stop whatever they are doing and to answer these questions.
The questions return four or five years later. “Are you planning to attend grad school?” “Do you have a job lined up?” “What are your plans?”
These senior questions end until you turn 65. Then they begin again. “So, when do you plan to retire?” This is the ultimate senior question.
I had heard these questions before, but they began in earnest after I turned 65 last year. “How long are you going to be doing this?” The questioner is usually (but not always) someone I have just saved money or had a difficult issue that I was able to solve. Now that I have justified my existence as an insurance agent, they don’t want to find someone new. In truth, my wellbeing is the often the least of their concerns.
My stock answer has always been that I need to be dead three years before I can retire. The question have become so frequent that I have started to number them. “Gosh John, you are the third person to ask me that today!”
The time may come that I retire. It may be voluntary. It may be involuntary. Either way, it is not today.
DAVE
www.againreally.com
Picture – An Empty Park At 5 PM – David L Cunix