The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe you worked most of your life, might even have gotten a pension or a 401-K for a reward, that, or you were a savvy investor, took your hard earned loot and invested it wisely. Me, not so much. Not the work part, not the investment strategy. If you remember your 3rd grade fable of the grasshopper and the ant, well, I wasn’t the ant.

I was the lazy fiddling hopper, job to job, then worked for myself, nary a thought to the coming winter. Or for what ‘retirement’ might hold when the work ran out and it was time to think about my Golden Years. You know, the years without a pension or a 401-K, the ones where it’s time to pay the piper. Time to maybe go down to the Social Security office and sign up, see what I’d paid in the past 50 years, find out the price of my slothfulness.

The nice folks behind the bullet proof glass with the armed security guard sitting a few yards away (just in case), explained my options and said they didn’t have a clue either how the numbers were arrived at, but did I agree with them? I said I did. Beggars can’t be too choosey – unless they’re mathematicians maybe. I was happy to get about anything.

What I got was better than I hoped for. Considering. They even offered the mizzus half of my paltry amount on top of mine. Just for being the mizzus. (I told her way back how lucky she was!) So now they were giving us 50% more than our measly monthly. And to top it off, they added 6 months backpay to boot, even asked if that was okay with me. Okay? Sure, I said enthusiastically, pour it on!

I got the first check this month. It’s not huge but I’ve never had the government pay me. Sure it was my money really they had held onto for me, but gotta tell you, it’s gonna feel like Christmas every month from now on. Who says there’s nothing good about getting old?

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