Live slow, die old

Sorry, that previous post self-destructed somewhere in the middle and I was too discouraged to start over. No one is out there reading anyway, so who the hell cares? It was just some garbage about how the phone never rings once you've left your job. Even most of the telephone solicitors and wrong numberers seem to give up on you.

Here are some more things you don't have to worry about when you get oldish and leave your job (engrossing details later):

Buying clothes. You find you have all the clothes you'll ever need for the rest of your life, except possibly sweat pants and socks, which tend to wear out while padding around the house. My closet is filled with beautiful pressed shirts, which I swear someday I will wear fashionably untucked with sneaks and linen pants so I can look like a rich beach bum. But I'm saving them for something, and wearing T-shirts and jeans, looking like a bum, sans beach. Of course, I've switched to long-sleeve T-shirts (a little expenditure there) because I'm an oldish guy and in the summer I fear skin cancer and in the winter I don't run the heat very high because I fear heating bills. Sweat shirts and fleece, that's the answer, and the universal oldguywear.

Bad service in restaurants. No, you don't have to fear that because you stop going to restaurants or you go to them when the staff is standing around waiting for customers to arrive, around 11:30 a.m. or 5:30 p.m., the official AARP dining hours.

The high price of gas. Who drives? No wonder old people are always crashing into farmers markets and store windows. They're out of practice. After you leave your job, the desire to get on the road with people going to their jobs fades pretty quickly, along with the desire to drink bad office coffee.

Bad weather. The funny thing is, the first thing in the paper that old people turn to is the weather report, and the last thing they'd consider is going out in the weather — bad weather, anyway. We're probably going to sit around the house in our sweats and fleeces, no matter the weather, so who the hell cares? But we care, probably so we can gloat that we don't have to go out in it, ruining our clothes, wasting expensive gas and enduring bad service in a restaurant. Instead we sit here, knowing the phone's not going to ring.

One of these days I'll get out there and use these coupons.