No One Remembers the Ending, Anyway....

You’ll have to excuse us those of us in the middle-age-plus population. We’re all a little collectively confused right now.  It seems that just recently we were tossing six bucks in the ticket window to go inside and watch Winona Ryder and friends face up to the challenges of adulthood in Reality Bites, a tale of rich-kid college goof-offs now pitted against the isolation of making choices and responsibly fending for themselves, and a young woman’s shock of realizing how mentally unprepared she was.

No sooner have many of us somehow survived that traumatic blast, than we’re pitted against this next unwelcome frontier known as “retirement”.  It’s a word uncommon to our cool, young Generation-X lexicon, one reserved for the more dignified, clueless aged, like “arthritis”, “shuffleboard”, or “The Lawrence Welk Show”.

But according to economists, sociologists and even some numerologists, this is one of those things categorically arrived at and dealt with in life, not like taxes and what the next generation prefers to refer to as “becoming unalived”.

The real matter for most of us U.S. citizens just trying to affordably exist through the end of the week at our tender middle-ages really is, what’s our plan to continuously afford to be able to do so..?  For so many of us, it’s just not about “hanging it up”.  Of course, if you’re a pension-equipped civil service worker or teacher with forty years of daily work behind you, you’re on the retirement clock, and after a grueling several decades, you’ve earned your departure.  For many, that alone is traumatic, and for many even equipped financially with presumably enough money to “outlive their lives”, many of these people have only a week or two of blessed commemoration before they can start beginning to fear the financial scare of outliving their life’s assets in the next five years.

It’s those very folks that will accept only a brief sabbatical before returning somehow to a paying job of some sort, whether advanced and industrial or small and menial. Many will not do so in the pursuit of their life’s longtime wants, hopes and dreams.  They’ll do it to pay the rent.

The word retirement bears a definition, but not the connotation it once did, the universal one we as teenagers long associated with the effective image of that white-maned portly chap, standing in front of his two-story, twelve-room, immaculately white-decked mansion on a gorgeous southern field against a majestic sunset in that financial brokerage commercial in the middle of CBS NFL Sunday.  That was our 1980s, and a good many folks of that white-maned chap’s age back then were the first to correct any misapprehensions about the fact that under the Reagan Administration, what was then the imposed Mandatory Retirement meant a sparse fixed income and an occasional dinner of the cheapest shelf pet food. The strength emerging at senior age back then was in refusing to stand down one’s pride in enduring this new strip of one’s so-called dignity, one now almost fully relinquished.  One of those folks might have even been the actor playing that fictional guy in the commercial.  The agency producing the spot probably got the faux mansion-front on loan from some movie studio.

Even those who proudly in discussion, upon “what do you do.?”, will offer “Oh, I’m retired”, are not likely “comfortable” for life.  There is a tidal wave of clarity abundance over the fact that with age comes invariable health challenges, need for conventional medical attention, unmeetable costs, minimal healthcare on absolutely any level and the realization that if you are not the President of the U.S. with trillions in a backlife of personal wealth, you can forget about the freedom to be treated to a full analytic physical exam by twenty-two physicians, even in two lifetimes.  Need we remember that around the time of the Obamacare laws, a good many citizens of this country opted to face the tax burden and live uninsured, due to costs, and in many cases, due to unemployment.

Depending upon how your last four decades have gone since turning legal age, this so-called “retirement” thing may not be something you’re not only not ready to embrace, but not interested in actually embracing.  Burgers and hot dogs on the grill on July 4^th are a trendy, All-American, succulent thing.  But with all due respect, maybe not everyone has an appetite for those.

In the same vein, not everyone is necessarily willing or ready, for more than just immediate financial reasons (but primarily those..) to walk off the treadmill of their daily lives and jobs and just “retire”.  For many, more than we realize, our jobs, these so-called yolks, these harnesses we complainably bear for so long in our daily lives, are in fact the nucleus of our lives.  While my own “X” generation was told in the 1980s that the old paradigm of going to work for one employer for two or three decades or more is now thoroughly extinct, there is, among this very generation a considerable body of people who have, almost unbeknownst to themselves, found themselves gratefully employed by the same employer, complaints, warts and all, for decades, amidst life changes, loss, relationships, endeavor, survival and visibility of the sixty-yard line.  Throughout it all, not a day of work missed, not a deadline met late, and not even every vacation day or sick day claimed.  And they’ve no intention of relinquishing their responsibility, if their employer is willing to continue to hold them in their trust. 

These are not folks, mind you, of immense salary of any sort.  If there’s one unattractive factor leading an employee to the sack heap, it’s an overpriced salary. If one’s salary is truly far overpriced in the face of some company’s all-new economic design, then the sack is kind of a foregone conclusion.  But if that employee is one whose stipend is actually scalable enough to meet that company’s ledger, and the work output continuously reliable, effective and well-received enough to help turn profit and generate positive outward image for the company, almost no employer in this day and age is going to pass that up.

The fact is, the “X” generation is likely the first to embody a kind of agelessness, a type not really known to the one-time draft-protest and Vietnam-vet baby-boomers, the war-veteran, government-mortgaged, homeowning grandparents we knew as white-haired Dinah Shore-watchers, or even ones a few years younger, who came up during the Great Depression and read the earliest Marvel Comics and attended CCNY in the 1950s.  All those folks lived more than one action-packed, death-defying life before we even knew them, and between war service, jobs in what was then high-paying U.S. industry and solid investments cooked in the go-go 1980s, they had no financial qualms about easing on down the road.   Many of us aimless college moneyspenders of the 80s didn’t live such full lives.  Some of us emerged from those concealing campus book forests to a world of barren cost, debt and unemployment, and simply clawed onto what we could when we could.   And now, decades later, here we are, things gratefully for the moment okay, maybe for the first time ever.  And now we’re told, we’ve got to plan on giving it all up.

Those of us who have not made too many bad choices ever since Reagan left the White House, those of us who have maintained much of our physical and mental well-being, have preserved a base amount of whatever we’ve earned and managed to squirrel away and invest moderately since Millenium’s end may not be ready to leave a more enjoyable resort to which we’ve only in our mind just arrived:  A liveable life. One that begins our day with the challenge of having to get up, work out, change into our outfits, check our e-mail for the day’s gripes ahead, and board the train into the office for our predictable stack of responsibilities, a relay race that awards us that invisible trophy each day.  The challenge ahead for this generation is largely not that of racing toward the finish line, but recognizing the endorphin boost and creation owed directly to that race. It’s not just income, albeit a huge overriding factor  And those who have chided us long ago about defining yourself by what you do for a living just might want to re-consider the definitions of that.

One thing I recall as a kid that’s gone away almost entirely is a term used to define “what you do”.  People didn’t call it a “job”, or “what you do for a living”.  They called it your occupation.  That’s really a beautiful term.  There’s lots of new, soft terms for unpleasant realities, like “unalived”.  Maybe it’s time to reboot this old and very respectable term for “what you do”.  Because much in the way You Are What You Eat, the truth is, whether you know it or not, by inner values, what you do is in fact who and what you are. Be it a shirt folder, a grocery bagger, a broadcast producer, an office administrator, or a ticket clerk, your excellence in performance defines you, and your embrace of that task helps you to be the best you are.  There is often no one prouder than a life-long stay-at-home parent.

There’s no such thing as “done”. If anything, this generation is ready. Let’s try and stay that way.  This soap-opera we’re living has long to go.  We’re not about to be written out. 

Noah F.

 

 

 

 

They Have Nice Oranges...

 

I don’t know how to say “Good Morning”.  I don’t think I ever have, nor do I even recall in my lifetime ever even using that phrase to greet someone. Really.  I’ve long come up with various all-purpose greetings to my fellow humans of all sorts, like “Good day”, or “How are ya’..”, or “Howdy”, or anything politely friendly.  But I do not acknowledge the day’s proud launch and the sun’s noble emergence.  There are not too many common habits from which I’m blocked on the basis of sheer principle, but this is affordably one of them.  Perhaps proudly the only one.

There’s this term called “swing shifts”, and many in this world live by them and are put to them. They are the livelihood of a population in which indeed only the strong survive. It’s an adorable little verbal description, like “wintry mix”, which does not nearly depict the near-fatal dangers of black ice, that invisible trap that on a good day can permanently cripple a pedestrian with an injury point blank, with a mere walk to the convenience store.  “Swing Shifts” denote the sometimes extra-long and enduring stretches at work closely held by workers in need, shifts separated by only less than ten hours of downtime between night and daybreak.  The recess does not allow for the proper inclusion of moderate travel, down-time, proper meal, a night’s sleep, a morning’s wake and preparation, and return trip.  And these shifts are a cornerstone of any given portion of someone’s week in the span of their regularized calendar life.

For reasons only my banker and psychologist will be able to spend a few volumes breaking down and explaining, to room-evacuating boredom, that’s been the shape of my life for much of it thus far. An adolescence of drug experimentation, a set of beers in concert parking lots on Friday nights and joy rides is not at all the profile of my own youth, and has gratefully allowed me to maintain much of my founding structure.  The deterioration I’ve incurred has been the result of the swing shifts that have defined my life.  Much like a World War II veteran, it’s a badge I hold with pride.

People who work in the broadcast industry are very often creatures of stealth.  There’s really no reason why they ought to be, and for all kinds of arcane and sometimes viable reasons, they are. It doesn’t lend a great deal of prestige to how they spend their lives, but it fulfills them in ways that self-help pronouncers are always advocating.  It’s been said that if your occupation, that thing you do every day that has you buried in commitment and activity which actually serves to pay your inflating rent to some end, actually provides you with a sense of personal accomplishment and pride almost every day, then you never have to retire.   That’s a pretty good survival arrangement for those of us who will never have the affordability in our lifetimes to do so. 

I’m one of them.  There is also the urban legend regarding the financial stability and income of those who work in anything bearing the connotation held by the title “broadcast industry”, that handsome and alluring phrase that conjures up iconic images of expansive sunny poolsides, Tudor houses or Upper West Side six-room apartment dwellings in classic pre-war residential buildings.  That’s actually one of the reasons for the common stealth.  It’s not the one-percent in hiding. It’s the Shame of the 99-ers.  There are too many positions gratefully, grippingly and very scavengeristically held by industry survivors, that while not by any means lucrative, maybe even loss-incurring, are ones long held, nurtured and long protected by those skilled enough to know how, ones that fulfill beyond bank account, and while definable enough in words, can’t really be conveyed, even sometimes to industrial brethren.  How do you explain the voluntary sacrifice of half a week’s sleep every week over the course of your adult life..?

You don’t.  You just function with it politely in a world innocently apathetic.  That includes paying no mind to those who greet at day’s start under a blazing eastern sun with “Good Morning”.  Like some others, I’ve learned how to contend with phrase intolerances.

Those intolerances include the metabolic challenges of functioning upright at day’s beginning.  Only the held nobility of one’s professional commitments can charge one’s batteries on a Saturday morning at 7:30am.  All those M*A*S*H episodes I watched at 7pm on Channel 5 as a kid each night definitely paid off.  I couldn’t do all this otherwise.  I’d have no template for existence.  At 7:30, after an hour or so of getting a few preparatory chores done on the floor, I’ll head downstairs to the takeout deli, just one oasis of many that still, after more than seventy years powers New York City. 

By that time, they’re usually open and doing business.  They’re probably at it even earlier on weekdays, but gratefully my own weekdays don’t begin until afternoon, so with any luck I won’t need to know. But on this Saturday I ambled outdoors, still bundled in my wool cap and heavy windbreaker.  It’s the first week of a brisk June.  I’ve just emerged from an industrial suite of electronics that’s for various reasons kept at fifty-nine degrees at all times.  The early morning frost of outdoors isn’t exactly a stunning blow.  I walk two doors down into the already-busy deli shop.  Yes, life persists even on a Saturday morning in New York.

While not nearly the “floor of the NYSE” this tiny interior could be on a weekday morning, it’s still pretty busy. The grill and chefs are hard at it in their white uniforms, barking away to one-another in Espanol.  Handsome and trendy-looking early risers are all placing their orders.  They are the people for whom our city stands.  They are the economic structures that wouldn’t be caught dead looking like anything less than that Polo ad on page four of the New York Sunday Times Magazine.

And here, wending his path through this cool-kid mob, is this dweeb in a Michael Nesmith wool hat, making his way over to the fruit bin for one of those huge sour apples and one of those king-size navel oranges.  For a place that thrives on grill orders, this little shop’s best kept secret is its navel oranges.  You couldn’t get one of these at Key Food in-season.  But you can get one here in January.  It’s remarkable. 

I’m not a grill-cuisine kind of guy. I’m the more Mediterranean-menu type who can live off fruits, nuts and some carrots for a long day or two, and with any luck not too much of anything else. But surrounding me is a World’s Fair of people about to chow down on some of New York’s best-prepared grease.

I’ve got my orange, apple, dollar sack of assorted nuts and simply turn to face the counter.  The shop is that small.  In front of me is a woman nearly my height, topped by a haystack of platinum-blonde hair, not quite portly in her duck-yellow T-shirt and blue-denim shorts, Timberland moccassins.  The high-end assembly-line ensemble. She’s up at the counter clarifying her order to the minimally-English speaking chef over the roar of the grill.  It’s a classic Jane Curtain-John Belushi “Olympia Diner” bit.  The conversation is a no-win challenge for this woman, trying to ascertain the complex list of selections for her and her accompanying family, her portlier husband near the window, a taller, stouter gray-haired fellow in handsome turtle-shell frames, probably ten years my junior, the vision of an award-winning L.L. Bean ad, the corporate exec on holiday, just a few feet away from his pre-adolescent son and daughter, a pair equally as handsome, all probably shuttled in on the PATH for a fun Saturday in The Big Apple.

Would I ever in theory deny these good folks such pleasure..? Never.  At one time I was in fact one of those blessed youngsters a few feet away.  Even younger.  Living with my mom in my uncle’s home in Bayside, my mom, my aunt and I would on occasion venture out on a Saturday for a city voyage, to the MOMA, and a tour through Brentanoes, a book-and-music emporium that will never hold a candle to the remaining Barnes And Noble structures of today.  Best conjure I can find today is an excursion through the Strand.  Those city visits into that broken-down metropolis of the 1970s remain a treasure.  My mom probably had visions of her son as one of those preppified-looking children in their Saturday Bean-togs and feathered-hair styles.  But I was rather a fat little nine-year-old with an untameable rats’ nest on top and a crew-neck pullover from Murray’s Husky Wholesalers on Northern Blvd.  A visit to Brentanoes often meant a new great Judy Blume paperback and maybe a cassette of a Dylan album I hadn’t yet heard.  Usually, the pick was a full-length winner.

The woman in front of me was getting somewhere with her translative struggle.  She turned to call to her husband, “Did you say bacon…?  You want bacon..??”  I wondered if bacon was quite so important to that fellow who apparently wasn’t about to even sit down to a traditional breakfast with his family in a regulation diner.  Was bacon on his fifteen-dollar egg sandwich quite the critical hinge on the whole day these folks planned, one for which they re-scheduled their lives, hired the dog-sitter, gave up soccer practice and re-scheduled that online Zoom-corporate strategy meeting…? Who am I to question the flowchart of what makes this little restaurant, this small engine powering this superpower island run, the ecosystem that allows this weird kid in the wool hat and polar windbreaker in June the privilege of dining on a luscious navel orange and a dollar-sack of almonds in a frosty industrial office-floor chamber in peaceful solace at eight in the morning on a Saturday..?

It was almost a shame, I thought, for what appeared to be only me appreciating the offering of such prime, natural fruit in a venue of preferred fried and grease-heavy traditional American breakfast numbers.  The fruit was probably a big seller with the runners, the twenty-and-thirtysomething digital designers and web developers, the “weekend warriors” in their designer togs and three-figure running shoes, on their passionate quest to run the length of this great borough, in the hope of one day qualifying for the Marathon.  It just looks and feels good to have those healthy, natural treats in your supply bag along with that bottle of brand-name alkaline water Jennifer Aniston’s holding in that digital subway ad, in her workout gear, looking sharper than ever thirty years after her sitcom fame. 

In my hungry and mostly-conscious state, I arrived with my goods at the counter.  The young, black-hoodie-clad, black-haired Latina, looking something like a figure seen in some NBC News report tape from abroad, was actually at a blockade in trying to tabulate the price of an orange.  Unlike the grill orders, where the chef will shout out the price or scribble it on the wrapper, the fruit is not visibly priced.  The young lady had to mount an investigation amongst her colleagues.  The chef did not know.  The counter assistant did not know.  They called the store manager, who did not readily know.  He went over to the basket of oranges, studied a few, to find no listed price anywhere.  He turned and shouted to the young lady, “Doh-lar-feefty..!”

Two-seventy-five altogether.  An embarrassingly small denomination toward such an important fixture in our town. But I also knew that with enough visits from it’s indigenous and visiting patrons, it would do well today.  I’d be upstairs, doing my part as well.  The lady and I finished our business and she kindly said, “have a good day, sweetie..”  I said back, “You have a blessed one, yourself…”, and I meant it.  No references to the time of day were necessary.  In the course of our discussion, it was irrelevant.

Noah F.