Afraid to retire

It's pretty bad when people you went to school with have already retired. It's also demoralizing to know that a youngest brother was the first of all of us siblings to retire.

I mentioned that to an acquaintance as we were having a quick brown bag lunch together.  She said, "My father-in-law is afraid to retire. All of us kids have a million household projects we need him to do and we're all just waiting for him to retire so we can start calling him for jobs. Needless to say, he hasn't retired yet. He's afraid he'll hear from us."

"Another approach," I offer, "would be for him to retire and eliminate his phone. If he has no home phone or no cell phone, there's no way to be found. Wouldn't that work?"

"What, and lose our handyman? You don't get it. Of course that won't work. We need him to work on our stuff. And the sooner the better, thank you very much," responded my harumph-ing lunch companion.

[Nancy Linenkugel is a Sylvania Franciscan sister and chair of the department of Health Services Administration at Xavier University, Cincinnati Ohio.]