RETIREMENT PLANS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-18-25)

    This year, as I sail off into the sunset after a 45-year career in network television, I'll be asking myself the same question that countless other retirees have asked before me: What am I going to do with this damned alarm clock now? They threw me and a co-worker a very nice retirement party, and the VP of Operations wished us both all the luck in the world. A very nice sentiment, but we BOTH can't have all the luck in the world, so we've made arrangements to divide it fairly.

     I'm ready to do all of the things that I've put off for so long. I can't wait to schedule that dream vacation to Australia. When I'm finally able to unfold myself after a 20-hour flight, it's time to party with the Aussies! Like the song says, "I wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day!" I settle for rocking and rolling at around dusk, and partying every other week. Ironically, now that I have all these spare hours to devote to sky diving and hiking the Appalachian Trail, I have sufficient cartilage left in my body only to hike to the bathroom a couple times a day.

     Have I saved enough money? I'm essentially in a race with my bank account to the finish line, and whichever one of us makes it there first is the loser. I can see myself not too long from now, making actuarial calculations in my head based on how much something costs versus how much time I may have left to enjoy it. Should I add an expensive addition to my home that will give me years of pleasure? Yes! But only when it seems like I have very little time left.

     When should you retire? You'll probably know it when you get there. It's a complicated mental calculation that takes into account job satisfaction, career goals met and unmet, the strength of your hobbies and relationships, the viability of your assets and whether or not your wife has threatened you with ballroom dancing.

     Like many retirees, I may want to keep a small size 11 footprint in the workforce. What is the perfect retirement job? A little bit of income would be nice, in case I get insecure about my Social Security. But I don't want it to be too hard, so hard that I get tired from my retirement. There are several jobs that could suit me perfectly. How about this one: Sometimes I find at the end of a long form, a blank page that says, "This Page Intentionally Left Blank," and I realize that since it didn't just happen by accident, someone must have spent some time and effort to remove the contents from that page. I could be that guy. I could put all the contents of those pages onto my kitchen table in my spare hours, and create my own Table of Contents.

     I'm always telling people what I think is going to happen. So what about the job of Oracle? I could tell your fortune, although even if you had a fortune I don't know what I would tell it. Instead, you could come to me, and for a small fee I'll let you know what's in the cards. I specialize in the future 40 or 50 years hence, so you'll have to be patient. By then it's likely that you will BE a patient.

     I think that I could have a late-life, part-time career in rap music. I don't care anything about rap music, but I have a great sense of rhythm, so I could be that guy in the background, the guy who says, "Uhh. Uhh. Uhh. Uhh," to the beat of the song, for no apparent reason. If everything needed an apparent reason to get done, not much would ever get done.

     Maybe I could bring back the job of Town Crier. My wife complains that I'm always whining about something or other. Sometimes I feel I need to yell it from the highest mountaintop. At least the nearest mountaintop, maybe the top of Mount Kisco. And when I finally climb all the way up there and yell it, the people below come together as one and say, "What? Can't hear you."

     I think I'd make a good rodeo clown, but I'll need to know if I'm supposed to make people laugh or bulls laugh. It's different material. What about a career at the Department of Corrections? I'm always finding mistakes on the internet in grammar and spelling. Consulting? Might be just right for me, because I have plenty of questions. I've heard it said by almost all my schoolteachers that "there are no dumb questions," and I was able to disprove that myth many times over.

     Maybe when you retire you just need to adjust your closely-held beliefs as to what a productive member of society should be. I hear all the time that people miss the action when they retire. I have a reader friend who was NY Supreme Court judge. When he retired, there was probably the thought that, "what am I going to do now that was as important is that?" And the answer is that maybe he should trade quality for quantity. Just judge a lot more things, of lesser importance. For instance, I've drafted a four-page decision citing Rick Melen v. the Manufacturers of Packages of Processed Cheese That Are Impossible To Open.

     Maybe it will turn out that trying to find my perfect retirement job IS my perfect retirement job.