Ways And Means

What’s the best way to make money after you retire? Well – you could take part in online surveys, you could sell digital photographs, you could trade items on eBay, you could teach an online course, you could write an ebook…

After I stop laughing, I have to remind myself that:

• My parents don’t own a computer
• My parents don’t know how to use a computer
• My parents can, therefore, do none of the above-mentioned

Okay, they can still invest their money the old-fashioned way and they could look through their old crap (sorry, stuff) and find out if any of it has any real value whatsoever.

Or… they can continue to complain about the rising cost of gasoline (they don’t own a car), keep cutting out coupons and only shop for sale items (whether or not they need them) and, like the rest of America, decide how the country ‘should’ be run – if they were actually in the driver’s seat!

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Enough Is Enough

I remember when my Dad used to drum.  Long after he retired from teaching and playing club dates on the weekends – weddings and Bar Mitzvahs – he continued drumming, almost as if his fingers had a life of their own. I never did that. My oldest son, also a drummer, occasionally does that. Maybe it’s a guy thing.

For years my Dad’s fingers would drum and drum and drum. Every surface had permanent dents or dings; every tabletop was worn of its natural patina of wood; every arm chair’s upholstery was permanently thinned – some worn right down to the material below.

But I haven’t heard that familiar sound in ages. At some point, Dad just gave up. When he finally decided, “enough is enough,” I’ll never know for sure. Was it when the phone stopped ringing for gigs or when the students stopped needing lessons or when time just passed by and all those years of experience and knowledge stopped mattering?

I know he sometimes has dreams about those days of working and teaching. He says they’re quite vivid and he remembers them all. The mind is a funny thing – focusing on some events, no matter how trivial, while fogging over others that seemed so important at one time. So maybe, in hindsight, enough is never really enough!