Retirement Plans?

 I have been employed since 1974. That was back when I was mowing lawns to make enough money to buy a waterbed. Since then my work history has been many and varied, with an emphasis on staying employed to make sure that I always had gas money and a few extra bucks to buy albums. 

Albums. Records. Vinyl LPs. Like the kids play these days. 

I am not naïve enough to imagine that I would have been fighting for scraps out in the streets if I hadn't kept working all those years. I had a pretty amazing safety net in my parents' support. Room and board would be taken care of, but that official John Chambers Planet of the Apes gorilla mask did not fall into either of those categories. So I saved up my pennies, nickels and dimes and eventually dragged all of those wadded bills and clanky bits of change to the magic shop on the Pearl Street Mall and made a point of wearing that furry chunk of latex out of the store. 

As my teenage years dragged on, it became increasingly important for me to remain nominally employed in order to keep gas in my car and the latest audio configuration in the dashboard. When I was a senior in high school I had a girlfriend for the first time and became abruptly aware of just how expensive being in a relationship could be. 

The "gap year" I ended up taking after I bailed on college in Santa Fe brought my parents to the mild brink of an ultimatum: I was not to be allowed to sit around the house all day waiting for my girlfriend, who was still in high school, to be free. I was told to get a job. 

Full time. Working at Arby's. 

It was probably this experience that hastened my return to academia, and after taking a year way I was off to my freshman year with the good graces of my parents who felt that I should concentrate on being a student. For that year, I was not required to have a job. I lived a life of relative privilege along with my fellow dorm mates, spending freely on the things that make college life. Mostly beer. 

When I woke up from that drunken brawl of a liberal arts education, I returned to an apartment in my hometown where I picked up where I left off: at Arby's. Now I was a dual threat. I was a student by day and the closing manager by night. 

It would be another decade of installing steel office furniture and running a video store before I was ready to launch myself into adulthood, and another five years after that before I stopped doing "jobs" and started my career. When I stopped being paid by the hour and started getting a salary. 

Now, all these years later, I find myself wondering how I might possible retire. Stop working? What if I need a gorilla mask? 

Maybe Arby's is hiring.