Retirement? You Can't Handle the Truth!

By Sommers

Preparing to retire is not easy. There is a lot to think about.

In Retirement? You Can't HANDLE the Truth! Dr. Dennis Sommers shifts from working orthodontist to humor author as a masterful and witty storyteller - sharing tales from his own post-retirement experiences, analyzing comical elements within his own

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Sep 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885046657

Book preview

Author’s Note

There wasn’t much laughter around our house growing up. Dad worked hard at the aircraft plant and at home. As was true of many in his generation, his focus was on taking care of his family—not laughing with it much. Mother provided the glue that held things together, including the expectation we would all be in church on Sunday mornings. Amusement wasn’t plentiful there either. At least, not until the day we walked to the car after church one Sunday.

The sermon had been about respect, something the preacher was so adamant about that he kept the congregation captive twenty minutes past the customary noon dismissal. Before we got to the car, Dad was fuming.

He said to Mom, That guy doesn’t know a dang thing about respect. If he did, he would have gotten me out of there by noon!

Dad wasn’t smiling. But I was.

The seed for recognizing the lighter side hidden within predicaments sprouted that day—an otherwise vanilla time in my childhood. However, it wasn’t until high school in 1965 that inspiration for this book came along. By then, my fascination with science was pulling me toward a career as an orthodontist. But high school provided something else quite important for enjoying life—comedy lessons.

As a sophomore, I gathered in the cafeteria for lunch with a group of classmates over a plate of peanut butter laden meatloaf or mock Salisbury steak each day. Before long, they expected me to arrive armed with a joke. With practice, each oratory better timed the punch line to coincide with Jimmy Rails packing in a mouthful of sloppy Joe or taking a swig of milk. Once I mastered this skill, no one dared sit directly across the table from Jimmy. Those who did suffered a wet splattering of half-chewed sandwich.

It was good to be recognized, at least by my small lunch group, as a source of humor. I was on a roll as my social status clicked up a few notches—from that skinny violin player to that funny, skinny violin player.

All of a sudden, to everyone’s astonishment, our Latin teacher asked me to star in the class production of ’Twas the Night before Christmas. The classic Clement Clarke Moore’s poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, was to be read line by line, first in Latin and then in English, as Santa acted out each element in front of 175 French, German, and Spanish students along with the handful who mistakenly believed Latin was a foreign language.

As the moment came for Saint Nicholas to come down the chimney with a bound, I followed our director, Ms. Chambers’, direction to crawl through the cardboard fireplace decorated with Christmas lights. After I stood and relocated Santa’s beard from the back of my neck to my chin, another Latin student continued reading, Fasciculus nugarum supinus. Et respexit sicut institor, aperiens sarcinam suam.

Only after Whitey Magnus immediately read the English translation did I realize my peddler’s pack of toys was supposed to be slung on my back. Instead, it was still on the other side of the fireplace. Lacking an alternative, Santa sighed, shrugged his shoulders, reversed course back through the fireplace to retrieve the bundle of toys, and then emerged a second time with the goods. As is sometimes said, the crowd went wild. The skinny violin player ratcheted up the social ladder a few more rungs.

It wasn’t until a college English professor implanted tools helpful in sharing the written word that I began to chronicle humorous events. A desire and knack for sharing the lighter side located within less-than-ideal circumstances has remained with me since.

Even though things aren’t always as sunny as we might want them to be, we can usually find humor—if we look for it. And there is a reason to try. Mayo Clinic reports that laughter can provide these health benefits:

• Creates positive thoughts that can help fight stress and potentially more serious illnesses.

• Stimulates your heart, lungs, and muscles, and increases endorphins.

• Can help reduce pain and physical symptoms of stress.

• Improve your self-esteem and guard against depression.

More than five decades later, seventy-five million baby boomers are nearing or beyond retirement age. A good number are already, or soon will be, looking forward to a more enjoyable time dedicated to family, travel, hobbies, and leisure activity. But, if like me, you are among this group, you know that life’s diversions persist much as they did before work days ended. Accidents, family drama, medical conditions, and constant reports of tensions over today’s societal, environmental, or political climates can bring sleepless nights, worry, and uncertainty about the future. It can sometimes seem the joyful bliss we have long hoped for has faded.

We have no shortage of material to educate baby boomers about when to start social security, manage Medicare supplements, how to invest nest eggs, or where to find the best place to live in retirement. You’ll discover none of that here. Instead, this book provides the sort of humorous insight necessary to manage frustrations after work days end. Prepare for an absurd analysis of retirement’s unexpected unpleasantries, challenges, aggravations, and hair-raising family circumstances that throw a wrench into life. There are plenty of them. Take it from me. I have relatives.

After prodding by family and friends to turn endless stories into a book, I have rekindled the satisfaction that came from Jimmy Rails spewing his lunch across the table. Whether you are retired, thinking about retirement, or enjoy a laugh at someone else’s expense, you will find what you are looking for here—and a reason to enjoy life when things don’t go as you planned.

As it was for those who gathered in the cafeteria for ’Twas the Night before Christmas in 1965—a humorous escape from the realities of life or retirement can be therapeutic in many ways through the laughter it brings, even if only for a brief time.

FLORIDA

Part 1

What to Expect

Chapter 1

Retirement Basics

The future ain’t what it used to be.

—Yogi Berra

When it comes to retirement, it ain’t always what it’s supposed to be.

Let’s face it. Yogi was right with his observation of the future—and many other life dilemmas. Like, If you come to a fork in the road, take it, or, Nobody ever goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.

He could have also done us a favor by adding insight on what to expect after we are no longer swinging the working bat.

Despite anticipating how wonderful an experience, event, travel, or purchase might be, when the time actually arrives, expectations don’t always match reality. Retirement’s reality can also struggle to deliver what we hope for. Still, there is no need to throw dreams out the window. Hopeful contemplation itself can be a pleasant thing.

Take purchasing a lottery ticket, for example. The thought of a future with a pile of loot rattles in the back of every ticket buyer’s head—until the drawing. Never mind the problem with relatives you haven’t heard from since 1965 suddenly appearing on your doorstep once word gets out that you’ve won.

Developing realistic expectations for winning the lottery, as well as what to expect in retirement, is important.

Think of retirement as you would about the Cialis television ad with a gray-haired couple sitting in separate bathtubs holding hands. This image poses a lot of unanswered questions. Two bathtubs? On a balcony? Have medication benefits kicked in? Then what?

There are far more questions to contemplate when it comes to retirement. For example, what to do about cheese?

At one time, we learned you could safely shave off the green stuff on cheddar buried in the fridge drawer before enjoying what remains. Despite such knowledge, there is a good chance we instead chucked green cheese into the dumpster when payday rolled around. Investing in more cheddar made more sense than taking a chance on explosive diarrhea. In retirement, however, folks might be more willing to take their chances with carefully manicured cheddar. After all, that green stuff is just penicillin. Isn’t it?

There are other issues to face when employment ends. Take bathroom scales. They never seem to read as we hope they will. Traveling to Florida, or anywhere closer to the equator, should allow those packing a few extra pounds to enjoy the effects of greater centrifugal force over gravity than if residing closer to the north pole.

For those unfamiliar with Newton’s laws of motion, his falling apple or centrifugal force, the latter sends your gut up into your throat on the Tilt-A-Whirl and permits astronauts to be weightless as they circle the earth. It is also the phenomenon some might expect after starting retirement closer to the equator in Florida. An address in the sunshine state should prevent the bathroom scales from crying out, One at a time, please! when we step on them. Unfortunately, in my case, Newton failed to take his vastly underpublicized ninth law of nachos into account within centrifugal force calculations.

Sure, I admit it. I’ve put on a few pounds since last punching the time clock. But I prefer to think sorting out the unequal and opposite effects of centrifugal force and nachos could bring about a revolutionary new mathematical equation that, once submitted to the Nobel Prize folks, might well diminish the effects of gravity. After awarding the Nobel Prize for the breakthrough, gravity exempt transportation, as enjoyed by Neil Armstrong, George Jetson, and Snoop Dogg, might be in every garage in America.

Think of retirement as camping. Remember your first tent? You couldn’t wait to sleep in the great outdoors (probably the backyard). Who can forget the excitement of roughing it?

But in the advancing years of retirement, following a night or two of sleeping in a bag on the ground, you need an air mattress under you; the air mattress gives way to a cot; the cot to a twenty-three-foot Prowler with bunk beds; the Prowler to an air-conditioned Airstream; the Airstream to the two-hundred-thousand-dollar diesel Provost that now sits in the driveway with the FOR SALE sign in its window. Pretty soon, you’re trying to score a couple of nights back home, where sleep comes easiest.

Yes, yet another dream, quickly forgotten, giving way to the reality of retirement. Similar to the relatives and dead fish analogy, camping isn’t really camping after three days. It’s living. What then can we expect retirement to become after three days?

Yogi explained it this way when it came to unwanted outcomes in baseball: We made too many wrong mistakes.

When it comes to retirement, knowing what to look for as you step up to the plate can bring greater satisfaction and enjoyment with fewer errors or mistakes. It would have helped to cross paths with a batting coach before my Retirement World Series (RWS) began. I might have had a better outcome during my first trip to the batter’s box if I had.

As it was the first day of my RWS in Florida, I learned trips to the gun club, golf course, or my favorite easy chair had to give way to my wife’s list of daily chores. I need you to go fix the windshield on the car, stop at the grocery for kale (similar to shredded green cardboard), and then swing over to the dry cleaners… my wife hurled at me. Where did the idea go that I’d be devoting my first three hours of every day sipping coffee and writing a novel?

Hold on just a minute. Just because I’m retired now doesn’t mean I’m your bitch, I insisted.

Oh, yes, you are, she replied, waggling a finger in my direction.

So far, she’s been right. In full confession, however, it isn’t all my wife’s fault. I have no trouble finding more reasons than she to derail my ascent into Pulitzer’s literary fame.

Take pest control, for example. At least, that’s what I prefer to call it.

If you choose to retire in Florida or its Keys, prepare for the lizards. Some are the cute little gecko types that are about as long as your index finger. They scurry about on the driveway, side of the house, or the shrubs. You get excited to see the little guys enjoying themselves. You may think they are committing hari-kari as you approach, and they leap off the house or deck—surely to their death. Yet, the little buggers land and scamper away like cats with nine lives. Geckos are so dadgum cute. Having your own family of them seems like a rite of passage to Florida retirement.

Then, there are the iguanas.

These guys come in all sizes, somewhere between that of a Johnsonville brat and Godzilla. Some of them have a beard more noticeable and heavier than my own. The problem is that they seem to enjoy working on their suntan lounging on the deck next to the pool.

This may seem harmless enough. But when the opportunity presents, they will also take a plunge in the pool as if a god (which they aren’t), presumably to cool down and show off an abdominal six-pack (which they don’t have) or a skinny little rear end (I’ll give them that).

More bothersome than these antics is they also take the opportunity to relieve themselves—not only on the deck but in the pool. How this behavior enhances their image to the opposite sex is unclear. To each lizard, his own, I suppose. Regardless, the iguana’s predilection for defecating on my parade creates a need to, shall we say, discourage them from hanging around and dropping deuces from here to kingdom come.

It’s not like you can shoo them away. They don’t come crawling over to you like a cat you could easily pick up and heave into the canal. Instead, they scamper into the mangroves when they see you coming and ascend to a perch to lie spread-eagled like a cougar until you go on about your business. Your departure is, by the way, when the pool is open sign goes on, and the lizard backstroke party resumes.

A better deterrent for these pesky reptiles is a couscous-sized pellet of lead traveling at about 850 feet per second.

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission permits you to dispatch an iguana with an air rifle on your own property, provided you do not jeopardize your neighbors by doing so and if whatever you dispatch doesn’t suffer. The precise definition of suffer is unclear, as well as how the Fish and Wildlife Commission might interview the deceased. Never mind your own suffering experienced when you discover poop in the pool.

Take Amos Moses. Amos was once a gecko-sized lizard that became one Big Papi, and he never even played