- Some people are looking to put me quickly back into the workforce- I've worked steadily, sometimes more than one job at once, since I was 16. Now that I'm retired, I'm taking a few months off, just to explore life in the gentler, slower lane. Although I'm not looking at all, I've had four firm job offers already, including an adjunct professor position. That hasn't stopped a beloved older relative from sending me job openings from the classifieds, including an entry level fry cook at McDonald's, a mosquito collector and tester for the agriculture department, and a farm laborer's job, including but not limited to building barbed wire fences.
- New emails- My inbox is suddenly filled with daily offers for adult diapers, motorized scooters, and ways to enlarge, enhance, and invigorate a body part I do not have. Retirement evidently makes a person incontinent, immobile, and a man.
- Lion hunting- I've taken up kickboxing (although I do it only for the fitness aspect and not for the particular idea of hitting or kicking anyone). A recent vigorous session with my trainer, punctuated with loud thwacks from each punch and kick, drew several foreign born university students into the gym, where they watched until we finished. One enthusiastically told me how in his country in times past, older women like me would have been thought of as warriors who could lead tribal lion hunts. Hmmm. Still not sure how to take that...
- No senior citizen discounts- Being retired and being eligible for senior citizen discounts are not synonymous. My non- retired husband asked the cashier at the movies if we could get the senior citizen discount now because I am retired. (He is all about frugality.) Being carded and not being old enough somehow has a different feel to it than it did in teenager-hood.
- A fountain of youth- repeated remarks from former co-workers about how much younger I look now that I am retired make me wonder how elderly I actually did look when I was working.
Now, friends, for you are are retired, what is the biggest surprise you had when you retired? And for you who are not retired, what is one thing about retirement that causes you to wonder?
