Friday, June 20, 2008

Pension Planning

Ignoto finds that if you live long enough, you must face the issue:

"But after all, life begins at sixty-five."

"It's for different reasons entirely that my life began at sixty-five.
That was when I qualified."

"Qualified for what? Voting?"

"Qualified for the old age pension, son. Ever since then I've been my own
boss. No more getting pushed around, no more licking asses, not for me!
Nobody can't take that pension away from me."

"It's a great thing," I said.

"It's a wonderful thing. It's the most wonderful thing that ever happened
to me in my life."

"Can you imagine what they did to me?" the old man said. "And that was
when I couldn't walk yet after my second stroke. They put me out in the
county poorhouse, with nobody to look after me except my chums out there.
They said all the hospitals were full. I still have some of the bedsores I
got then. And then they weren't going to give me my old-age pension, even
after I qualified."

"Now I got me a little place of my own under the stairs at the warehouse,
and nobody can say boo to me."

--Ross Macdonald, Blue City 8-10   (Alfred A. Knopf ed. 1947).

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