Bitter Retirement

 

I know I look pretty old for a 41 year old, but that’s because I’m really only 6.  I have lived a hard life of eating food, laying on the couch and pretending to type things at work to make them think I’m working. Ever since I was young, I’ve always wanted to be older.  I’m not just talking 20, I mean 90.  I’m talking beyond the golden years and straight to the Gandalf the White haired years.  Who wants to go through all the pain of learning how to eat, and crawl, then walk, then run, then jump, then talk, then go to school and do well just so you can graduate from high school, just so you can go to college, just so you can go to a job for 40 years so you can finally be too old for work and retire?  Besides, when I was young, I figured they would have passed me right through, because I was a superhero that saved the world at least seven times.  Here are the many reasons why I want skip the young and middle ages and go straight to old and retired.

I want my 401K, pension, social security, my inheritance and my golden parachute just so I can blow them on all kinds of stupid things like jet planes I will crash, cars I will fall asleep at the wheel of and mansions I will forget the keys for, then get lost in.  You only get old once.

I want to be able to shuffle around in my slippers and pajamas all day, with crazy hair, and a lost blank expression on my face.

I want to finally figure out the mysteries of shuffleboard, backgammon and lawn bowling.

I want to sit on a porch being  crotchedy, bitter and old.  I want to be ignored by the neighborhood kids when I yell at them to “get off my lawn” even thought the lawn is dead yellow stalks of wheat that haven’t been cut in years.  I want the neighborhood kids to have a challenge to go by “Old Man Bitter Ben’s” yard and escape without getting yelled at.  I want to be the house that no kid ever wants to Trick or Treat at because his house is scarier in the day than most people’s at night.  And I want to be the one that they talked about because “once he put a razor blade in some kids candy”.

I want to apply for a job as a greeter at Walmart. I want to pretend to be the friendliest guy ever when they hire me, then as soon as I start, mumble passive aggressive insults to customers as they enter, just enough to where they know they heard me say it, but not enough to prove it.  I want everyone that goes into Walmart to feel uncomfortable, bitter, upset and crankier when they leave than when they got there.  Then, just when they open the doors for Black Friday, walk off the job, never to return, never even to pick up my paycheck.

I want to live in a retirement facility where people have to take care of me.  I will constantly be buzzing the nurses, asking for more outrageous things than a celebrity rider and demand they be done quickly.  Then when they arrive at my house to give me my demanded items, fall asleep for hours.

I want to wear a hearing aid so visitors think I can’t hear them, so I make them repeat things louder and louder, then fall asleep and make them think they can leave, then wake up and repeat to them all the bitter things they were saying about me when they thought I was asleep.

I want to make my grandkids listen to my boring stories about life “before the Ipad and the time machine and flying cars” and how we only had laptop computers and the internet.

I want to have a cabinet full of legal prescription drugs that many would be envious of, but would never be able to take from me.

I want to make up words and convince people that they are real and they should start using “proper words in their correct context”.

I want to be able to ride the scooters at grocery stores, then pretend that I’m playing bumper cars with other grocery store patrons.  Whoops…

I want to be able to go to a movie and only pay $11.75 with my senior discount and rub it in the face of people that had to pay $20.

I want to sit in an outdoor tub, but alone and not with someone else.

I want to chosen to become a model for the cover of AARP, then become unreasonable and force them to get a bitter old man picture.

And most of all…..aslkfj;laskjdfalksfdjasf

Sorry I fell asleep. Did I miss Jeopardy?

ARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Old Man Ben