THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, June 21, 2012 Formerly & Everywhere! RFD# to the gulf stream waters 3 to the New York Island by Lorrie Baird
jim-lorrie@earthlink.net
FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL BE TIRED IN RETIREMENT
Ye s - by Lorrie Baird
terday I heard on TV that the next genera- t i on o f ret irees won’t be able to a f f o r d to leave their jobs
until age 80…if they don’t drop dead of exhaustion first. Now I know a lot of people who thrive on working well into their 8th decade; our beloved pub- lisher is one of them. Then again, he is a business owner. If somebody told me that I would have to get up at the crack of dawn and slug my way through morning traffic to reach a lackluster job just to sur- vive until age 80 I would do one of two things: start saving for retirement at age 3; or consider shooting myself. Only kidding…I think… maybe not. It gives me the heebies to
realize we are probably the last of a dying species: re- tirees living on a company pension, social security and a small nest egg we’ve managed to scrape to- gether after all those years of working 12, sometimes 14 hours a day in order to earn it all. (Do you hear that? It’s the sound of an- other American dream bit- ing the dust.) That’s why I bristle when I hear about retirees having all those “entitlement” programs. Somehow the government has forgotten to put the word “earned” before it. Recently a young work-
ing woman in her 40s who is a single mother put it to me this way: “How would you like to be working that hard knowing that Social Security and Medicare aren’t going to be there for
you when it’s your turn?” Sobering, isn’t it? So with all this depress-
ing news in the pipeline Jim and I have decided to live each day of our alleg- edly decadent retirement to its very fullest knowing that if we are the last sur- vivors of a dying breed we are going to go down with the biggest splash us old geezers can make before we sink into oblivion. Every day Jim gets up
and puts on a tourist shirt that screams “Look at me…I’m a retired geezer and proud of it.” I am okay with that. In fact, I go out of my way to buy loud shirts for him. These are topped with a variety of Panama style hats with brims so wide Jim’s face gets lost underneath. This also works well for us be- cause, although we’re get- ting older every day, we’re not getting any prettier. As for me, I wear clothes
that look like a florist shop vomited all over them. Sunglasses are required in order to avoid retina dam- age. I don’t wear Panama hats. Instead, I wear de- signer sunshades from the country club. Oh how far we’ve fallen into the tour- isty retirement pit. But hey…this is serious busi- ness. We have a legacy to uphold for the coming generations to live vicari- ously through us before we dwindle into extinction. We go everywhere by
golf cart. And we travel in packs. The more “distinc- tive” your cart is the bet- ter. That’s why Jim got all excited when he saw some gently used oversized golf cart wheels for sale in the newspaper. When he told me about them my re- sponse was typical. “Nope. Nada. Not happening!” Jim retorted, “Before I
could align the cart we’d already worn through two
front tires.” “They’ll last us another
three months for sure,” I reminded him. “But these new tires are
cool. They’re big and wide and have mag wheels.” Me: (beginning to waiver)
“The plastic wheels look just fine…but then again you did break them and had to glue them together and I wouldn’t want them to fly apart when I’m zoom- ing down the boulevard. How much did you say they cost?” That’s how we wound
up with one of the most tricked out golf carts in our community. We named our cart “Scoot” at first, but when Jim put the new wheels on we picked up more than just height and status…we now own the fastest golf cart in the ‘hood. I have clocked in a strong 25 mph before I had to slow down on a curve because it got too scary. I still get a kick out of whizzing by a couple of guy golfers, giving them a taste of my dust. We have lots of fun that way (and now I take fun extra seri- ously, knowing that it’s up to us to have enough fun for two generations.) After all, it’s a dying lifestyle we are upholding here. So we renamed the golf cart “Zippy” and already Zippy- Scoot is a legend. We were shopping in the
supermarket the other day when we heard, “Ex- cuse me…but I was be- hind you driving to the store. I clocked your cart going almost thirty…did you know that?” “Yep”…Jim said with ob-
vious pride.” “How do you get it to go so fast?” “Big tires. Bigger bat-
teries. Other secrets I’m keeping to myself until I go to that big golf course in the sky,” Jim said with See BAIRD on 32
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