[lbo-talk] blog post: As I Turn Sixty-Five

MICHAEL YATES mikedjyates at msn.com
Sat Jan 29 08:13:32 PST 2011


Full at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org/2011/01/29/as-i-turn-sixty-five/

"I began teaching, at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, in 1969. I was twenty-three years old. Like all new employees, I had to fill out employment forms. One of them concerned my pension. I had to mark my expected retirement date. Everyone then considered sixty-five to be the normal retirement age, so I added sixty-five to my birth year of 1946 and wrote down 2011.

Over the years since then, I sometimes thought of that form and the year 2011. It always seemed so far away, and I always seemed so young. When I got married in 1977, I was only thirty-one and 2011 was thirty-four years in the future. I got divorced in 1986, and 2011 was still a distant twenty-five years ahead. When I moved to Pittsburgh with Karen and the kids in 1988, I was forty-one, but a new life, with a family in a big city, made me feel younger, and the joys and sorrows of watching the children grow up made me forget 2011 altogether. . . ."



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list