The Boomer Chronicles

Envious of my newly retired cousin Dan from Minnesota? You betcha. He worked for the U.S. Postal Service for the last 30+ years and earned the right to retire at age 53. The only thing is, he wasn’t wild about his work for a long time. So last Friday was his final day. Here is a short essay he wrote about an amazing discovery he made since retiring five days ago:

Despite the months of planning, questions, research and soul searching,  this morning while I was getting dressed I discovered a problem I now have  in retirement that I never had in my work life — a drawer full of black socks. Why so many socks? It’s very simple. Like every other American male, when the sock drawer was nearly empty, I could not be bothered to search through the piles of clothes looking for socks to wash. Instead, I simply bought more. And when you buy your socks at the warehouse store, you replenish the drawer by the dozen.

Several years ago after complaining about matching up socks, my wife suggested that I only buy black socks from the same manufacturer. It was a brilliant idea that I, of course, would have never thought of. Now years later, I have a drawer full of matching black socks and no place to wear them.

Tomorrow in my first act of de-cluttering this house, I think I will take a bunch of my socks over to Goodwill, so someone who was not fortunate enough to retire at 53 might have a chance to wear some matching black socks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 9:31 am and is filed under Baby Boomer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.