Going Slow

Going Slow

           Today I turn sixty-six years old.  According to the Social Security Administration, I am now eligible for full retirement.  I’m waiting until March to start my monthly check for the silly reason that the monthly amount will then click over the maximum amount for someone my age of $3,011.  If I waited until age seventy to claim (four years from now), I could claim $3,790 per month.  That means I am choosing to take a pre-tax amount of $138,506 before I max out.  By my math and with not TVM (time value of money) in the calculation, that means that if I live past age 84.8 years old, I will have made the wrong choice.  Since I cannot fathom being 84.8 years old, despite having at least two good friends who can claim that age or more, I am not terribly concerned about that possible breakage.  I am expecting not to care about this one way or another and will choose to live like the fabled grasshopper rather than the ant for fifteen blissful years.

           This morning, as I stepped out onto my typically busy New York City street, there was road repair going on with the requisite heavy steel plates and the open trenches of urban utility work underway.  Just like on the highway when you pass road construction, the City has flagpeople out to direct traffic for overall safety purposes.  It’s a cold but sunny day today, a gloves-on day.  As I turned to walk down the short street, following the orange temporary guardrails, I saw ahead of me Nanook of the North (actually a young woman dressed as warmly as she could with the furry hood of her Canada Goose parka zipped tightly around her face) holding a sign pointed straight at me that said in black on orange lettering, “SLOW”.  She looked like a nice young lady (what little I could see of her) probably working her way through school.  I didn’t want to ask her how she could afford an expensive Canada Goose parka (they cost just over $1,000) and figured she had as much right as anyone to brave the elements in the best available equipment.  So, instead I stopped and said, “It’s the only way I know how to move”, meant to be in response to her rather loud sign.  She smiled and I moved on to the deli for my morning bagel.

           I had already gotten a nice birthday hug from my wife, several nice email and phone call birthday greetings from kids, family and friends, and gotten a big friendly hug from Corrado, our morning doorman who declared that he turns seventy in nine months.  So I have celebrated my birthday in as much pomp and circumstance as I care to at this point except for this story.  I need to write a birthday story to feel good about my ongoing writer’s obligation and I was looking for a theme.  Nanook, Canada Goose and Corrado gave me that theme.  The theme is Going Slow.

           Everyone says, no matter how trite it sounds, that everything goes by too fast.  Corrado said that very thing to me this morning.  The Impeachment Trial in the Senate has been going painfully slow, but now looks to be accelerating towards a finish line labeled Acquittal.  The final die is not yet cast, but there is a chance we could see Mitch McConnell break out of the Democratic pack of dogs (accordingly described by his falsely-righteous band of Republican brothers) and sprint to the finish line by Friday night, purportedly so that we can all relax and enjoy our Super Bowl on Sunday.  What could be more American than feigning a slowdown for something as obvious as witnesses at a trial, and then, behind the scenes, setting the stage for that final head-fake that gives you an open field to run into the end zone and declare victory as you spike the ball of democracy into the turf?  Corrado, Nanook and I are all grateful for the lessons of how to succeed in slow-walking justice in America.

           It’s my birthday and I get to ramble as I choose today so I’ve covered the topics of Retirement, Love and Politics all in 700 words.  That leaves me about 500 more words to discuss what the Going Slow program really means to me.

           My office mates are busy today moving our office to more humble quarters. Offices are tools, not status-symbols, in my equally humble opinion.  My lovely wife Kim is at home busy packing up the last of our possessions to be shipped off in the next two days to San Diego.  We have something like ten boxes and half as many carrying bags filled with things we are giving to our old doorman Thomas, who takes them to his church and lets all the needy folks in his parish have access to all the stuff we once thought was important in our lives and now feel is just George Carlin “stuff” that clutters our life and is best donated to those who lack sufficient stuff.  The themes of slowing down and shedding stuff go hand in hand.  We can’t travel as far or as fast in life if we are encumbered by too much stuff.

           People seem surprised that after forty-four years in New York City, and having three kids and two grandkids here, that I am not keeping a pied-a-terre to return to and enjoy New York City.  I enjoy the City and I will be returning, regularly I imagine.  But I don’t want more stuff and a pied-a-terre is really nothing more than added and unnecessary stuff.  We are planners at heart and rarely decide to travel at a moment’s notice.  That means we should have no problem finding reasonable hotel accommodations in the exact location that best suits us.  We all understand the math and know that we can stay in more than enough of the best hotels and come out way ahead of the cost of a pied-a-terre.  I’ll go so far as to guess that my $138,506 of Social Security loot will pay for those hotel rooms over four or five years. And then there is the hassle of ownership (even if renting) which requires thinking about what is going on at a place of yours when you are not around.  That is way more to worry about and would slow me down way more than I want.  I want to be footloose and fancy free to enjoy my life in whatever ways that my Social Security check allows.

           Obviously that is a joke, but it shouldn’t be.  With annual income of $36,132 I could perhaps afford a small rental apartment and minimal food (one step up from dog food).  I hope that one day when I have had all the fun I could possibly have had (and I expect to have lots and lots of it yet) and have fulfilled every obligation I can possibly imagine (that list seems endless to me right now), that I will be satisfied with a life that can be lived on my Social Security check.  I believe that will be a good goal that will bring me the peace to which we all aspire, the goal of being happy and contented with going slow.