flanerie.org

I watched the movie About Schmidt last weekend and it got me wondering.

Oh, it was about Jack Nicholson retiring and having a late-life crisis. Or it was about a dude called Schmidt, played by Jack Nicholson, retiring, etc.

The thing is, I have been working for 20 years for a whole range of companies, big and small. I have worked with many hundreds of people, and I have never once seen a person retire.

Do the nearly-retired go to special companies to retire from? Is it like the elephants' graveyard, crawling on their knees with their final shallow breaths?

Or perhaps I have seen a bunch of people retire without ever realising it. They pretend they are going to another job, or just popping out for a sandwich, and disappear into the land where people read the entire newspaper every day.

It also made me wonder about my own retirement - it needs to be soon, obviously, and involve foxy handmaidens, whatever they might be, lots of money, and a butt-load of drugs for when either my mind or body hits the skids.