The Day After You Retire

I was ready to go. My love of kids was not tarnished by virture of being with them for 30 years, I was on top of my game, had good humor and the kind of freedom that competence can bring you if you push long enough. First and second graders are really easy to enjoy, however, so maybe calling it work is a bit of a stretch. But I did have to be dressed by 7 every morning. There were no tears on my last day at school, at least not from me. I loved what I did, did it and am now ready for the next act. I have not stopped thinking or learning. There is actually more to think about when you don't have to write notes home to parents explaining why you took their kid's smencil away (that's a pencil that smells like something every other kid wants to smell while you're teaching math). Here are some things I've already learned since retiring in June:

-get a big dog. I realized that without little kids to take each arm and pull, it is very helpful to have a dog tall enough to be of some good.

-use the hearing or vision impaired option when asked to type in word verifications on those websites requiring it. I'm not sure what that's all about. The squished together, bent and floating words you're supposed to figure out and retype are more of an eye or patience test than anything else. Why suffer the humiliation?

-eHarmony has a lot of guys over the age of 60 who are physically fit on paper.

-Even if you can't afford it, hire people to do everything for you. It's much easier than trying to explain what happened, how you tried to fix it or why you used a butter knife instead of a Phillips screwdriver.

This blog will give my AARP homies something to laugh about other than the list of things they said they wanted to do when they retired.