Talkin' 'Bout My Degeneration

[jamesovei]

 Luke O'Neil's Welcome to Hellworld for this week has me thinking. 

I've said before and repeatedly that my retirement plan is the collapse of civilization. I've worked too many low pay jobs in the US and worse, Texas, to have anything remotely resembling savings. Even if the GOP fails in their plan to dismantle, demolish, and remove social security, what I have coming to me at retirement age will provide me with fuck all. I can only hope they're so distracted by their Operation Helter Skelter they never get back around to it. (Ha! Fat chance!)

My dad's father worked for the electrical co-op for his East Texas county, coming back twice not because he needed the money, I think, but because no one understood legacy electrical equipment. He eventually offered to teach new pole maintenance workers, but the co-op declined. He was also in his local volunteer fire department. When he aged out of receiving the calls when there were fires, he would go in and mow the grounds around the fire station until they decided he was too old for that. He also led the music and singing at his Baptist church, having started when he was 16 and only stopping to fight in WWII. He did that into his early 80s. 

My mom's father was an electrical inspector for the city of Dallas. He retired not five years before having a widowmaker heart attack while swimming laps at his local YMCA. My mom's mother was an elementary school teacher. She retired and began proctoring tests for the DISD, accompanying local girls' soccer teams on overnight trips outside of Dallas. I honestly believe my grandmother retired to work harder at the things she wanted to do. It's nice when you can manage that.

Like me, my mom did whatever work she could get until earning a doctorate in her mid-60s. She retired but relaxation was forced on her. Like her mom, my mother retired to work on things that interested her. She decided it was past time to lose weight and, hey, why not add some muscle mass, too. She forgot she was in her 70s and pushed herself to a point where her body pushed back. She was just short of bedridden for over a year. I say just short off because my mom is stubborn. She would force herself up, when she could, to do whatever she felt needed to be done. 

I cautiously began speaking to my mom about getting and using a cane. I knew she would fight against a walker. That's for people worse off than she, or so my mom would say. I thought I could talk her into a cane if it was a cool cane, one with a cool design or possibly a sword cane. Friends who are rennies or medieval reenactors could show her how to use the sword part of a sword cane. Thankfully, my mom began recovering. She still appears to be in some pain, but she's either used to it now or it's lessened to a manageable level. Or both. I suspect it's both. 

When I was a child, my father was a schoolteacher. He became a truck driver when it became obvious he could no longer support a wife and children on a schoolteacher's pay. He's yet to retire, though he's thought about it. My mom says dad doesn't want to retire because he doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up. 

All this I think on, wondering what it will be for me in 20 years or less or more. I would if I could go back to school and focus on gender studies or UX/UI or both. I have something of an interest in both. I'm not sure I want a job or career in either, though.