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I’m not counting on Brett Favre. Or a Muumuu.
Garth Brooks pulled out Brett Favre’s most notorious play last week and announced he’s coming out of retirement.
Not only is the thunder rolling, but so are heads in Washington. The same day as Brooks, Congress announced no social security COLA for the first time since 1975.
I wondered why the seniors were so upset about soda. Wholesale clubs offer great discounts on 36-packs. Probably senior citizen discounts, too. But a quick internet search revealed COLA is a social security acronym for “cost of living adjustment.”
Oh.
Personally, I think retirement’s an annoying concept.
First, baby boomer wives always lament about bored, high-maintenance, recently retired husbands. Just when they’ve adjusted to lives without children, the husbands come home to roost, demanding morning play-by-plays of the day’s “plans,” and something besides a handful of peanuts for lunch.
Second, call me shameless, but the thought of being 65, lounging in a muumuu and sipping pina coladas in Naples or on the beaches of Cheyenne is not appealing. Nor is the thought of traveling around the world on the dime of taxpayers 40 years younger than me.
Third, Garth Brooks is playing his cards right. No longer is social security and aging a two-of-a-kind, sure thing. Retirement’s a fading reality. It hasn’t been around that long anyway. Humans were okay with working their whole lives for thousands of years.
Things changed in 1883 when Chancellor Otto Von Bismark of Germany initiated the concept of retirement. In a March 1999 New York Times column, Mary-Lou Weisman wrote, “Marxists were threatening to take control of Europe. To help his countrymen resist their blandishments, Bismarck announced that he would pay a pension to any nonworking German over age 65. Bismarck was no dummy. Hardly anyone lived to be 65 at the time, given that penicillin would not be available for another half century. Bismarck not only co-opted the Marxists, but set the arbitrary world standard for the exact year at which old age begins and established the precedent that government should pay people for growing old.”
Americans may never solve the Social Security predicament. Nobody wants to die, so we pay to live forever on pills, ventilators and Medicare. We expect to be supported by — ironically — an anti-Marxist system that only works when people mostly die before they’re 65.
Trust me, people live a lot longer than that in America. Hospitals are overflowing with octogenarians.
Sure, I write this column every week, but twenty years ago, my dad was right.
I told him I wanted to be a writer.
He said I ought to consider a profession that would allow me to eat more than beans.
So I chose nursing.
And it’s the best decision I ever made.
Aside from nightly, extravagant dinners at Ruth’s Chris, nursing feeds my writing. My favorite patients are octogenarians. Often the men are war veterans who turn from grey to pink in seconds when they realize I want to hear all about their stories. Spouses visit, and I learn all about what it takes to stay married twice as long as I’ve been alive.
More than that, I’m humbled by their extraordinary wisdom and peace.
Perhaps that comes from the millions of dollars they’re making in Social Security.
Or maybe when you’re eighty, you realize all the running and hand-wringing and brow — furrowing you’ve done for 70 years doesn’t accomplish anything, except a warm bed and a chance to wink at cute nurses.
Regardless, I love my friends in old places.
And I regret I can’t solve or offer solutions to the Social Security mess in my little 500-word column.
But I can offer this: Pull out your old Garth Brooks albums. Grab your honey, and two-step around the living room.
While you’re still getting paid.
While you can still appreciate the dance.
Amy Sorrells is a Zionsville resident and writer working on her first book.
E-mail Amy at aksorrells@gmail.com.
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