Graduation day

I started working selling Grit magazine door-to-door when I was pretty small.  I have no idea what age I was.  I was extremely good at it.  I got all the prizes they offered and got some good spending money too.  Made friends all over the neighborhood too.  I sold Grit for a few summers and then graduated to lawn mowing.  Me and Mike Lane would push our mowers around the neighborhood and when we saw a high lawn we'd offer to mow it for two bucks.  If it was a corner lot we'd charge 2.50. 


For a while I painted address numbers on the curb.  Sold tomatoes for Bob The Tomato guy too.  He'd come buy in a white panel truck and pick up all the kids he could get.  Then he'd drop us off on corners around town and pick us up later to collect the cash.  Good home-grown tomatoes too.  Whooee.  The people loved seeing us come buy. 


Then I had a paper route.  I'd deliver the papers before dawn.  This was back in the days when you'd have to be careful not to hit the freshly delivered bottles of milk on the porch.  Sometimes, when I did, I'd get the paper and throw it on the roof.  That way they would never suspect me of hitting the milk bottle. 


So I got my first real job at Don's Restaurant when I was 14.  I'd go in there before school and clean up the floors of the restaurant.  Out one back door of Don's Restaurant was a bar.  I guess it was Don's bar but I don't remember the name of it.  I'd clean that too.  Then I'd go to school. 


There was a black guy who cooked for Don.  He sang love songs to me and grabbed at my private parts and tried to corner me in the back room and stuff like that.  Don wasn't interested when I complained.  After a very short time I quit Don's and went to work washing dishes at Markie's restaurant.  I've worked ever since.  Put in 49 years of fulltime gigs.  Never had more than two weeks off except that summer when I was attempting to be a hippie. 


Well on May 29th 2014 it was my birthday.  That was my last day to work.
I didn't do squat that day.  Showed up and hung out and laughed and smiled real wide and shook hands and ate the good noshes that my fellow workers brought to the break room.  Then we moved down the hall to a meeting room where they had a birthday cake for me.  Ms. Donna even showed up.


I have some great friends at work.  Too bad I'll probably rarely see them again.  I just can't go back to work.  It was a good job but I sure hated working. 


Then after work we went to a club downtown.  Donna suggested we go there for 'a couple of beers'.  She actually had gathered a large bunch of my old friends.  We hung there all night and ate and drank and laughed. 


Next morning I still woke up at 5:30 but it was the first day of the last of my life.  What a feeling.  But that day was going to be a day off even if I didn't retire.  So that weekend was only nice.  That following Sunday was the big day.  Not Monday.  Sunday.  You see, all those years I've been working I've totally dreaded Mondays.  I've dreaded them so much that it's ruined my Sundays.  Sunday afternoons and then, on into Sunday evenings, it's been progressively depressing.  That Sunday - the first Sunday of the last of my life - that Sunday was totally terrific. 


Now, how's retirement? 
Like they say, how did I ever find time to work.


Maybe I'll do something important soon.  But right now I'm just being retired.  I just sit around and smile a lot.  Looking forward to smiling some more.


I'll go back to work part time in the fall.  I'll be an adjunct at Tulsa Community College.  But right now I just sit around and smile.