G.O.M.

I don't know if you saw the movie "Grumpy Old Men" (1993), starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith, but that's what gave me the idea for this subject.

I am normally a pretty cheerful chap. I wasn't born grumpy, nor was I grumpy for most of my life, but in my old age (80) grumpiness, sadly, has begun to take a hold. There are many things that annoy me nowadays: TV commercials that are an insult to the intelligence of a 10-year-old...and more especially the stupefying barrage of medical ads ("You may have acid reflux disease - talk to your doctor")...drivers that don't have the common courtesy to let you merge into their lane when yours is blocked off...invasion of one's privacy by phone callers begging for money for their charity...the flood of online and postal offers for credit cards and mortgage loans (to sink you further into debt)...people who greet you with "Hi, how're ya doin'?" but don't really want to know...politicians that will tell you anything you want to hear so you will vote them back into their $165,000 a year jobs in the House...

I can probably come up with a few more, but that will do for a start. One saving grace about my grumpiness is that after I have vented my spleen in private about these annoyances, I invariably feel better.

Do you have any pet peeves? If so, please share them with me and others.You may qualify for membership in G.O.M. (or G.O.W. Grumpy Old Women).

Pete

Hi, I'm Pete, and I'm 80 years young. A little bit about me...I was born and lived in England until I was 26, then my wife and I and our 2-year-old daughter emigrated first to Toronto, Canada, where our son Pete Jr was born, and eventually to California. I worked for the Walt Disney company for 21 years before retiring in 1986 when I turned 60. My wife had passed on, and I had no further interest in the job. I'd been a commercial artist all my life, and I was good at it, but I never liked it, if that makes any sense. The world of advertising and publicity to me was merely a way to get people to spend money, often on things they didn't really want or need. Disney was a bit different - they had a product that was family-oriented and fun, so I felt ok about that, but by the age of 60 I was burned out anyway. I didn't ever want to see a pastel or a paintbrush or a drawing board again as long as I lived.

I didn't have much of an idea of what I was going to do in retirement - no grand plan, no special interests except for music and doing a bit of writing - and taking annual trips back to England. Then I happened to meet a lady called Wendy on a senior chat group on Prodigy - by now I had a computer -and although she wasn't a senior, she was interested in what seniors did in retirement. To cut a long story short, she was starting a penpal/friendship newsletter, and I offered to help with the production of the newsletter - against my better judgement, because it meant getting back into doing artwork again - something I had sworn to myself I wouldn't do!! But life has many roads and turns that we don't expect, and I found myself enjoying a totally new kind of artwork - no brushes, no paint, no ink, no drawing board - just a screen and a keyboard and access to hundreds of typefonts and graphics.

So here I am, 12 years later, still working on Inky Trail News and enjoying it because it gives me something to do, a way of keeping the brain cells active. I've met Wendy a number of times in person, though I now live in Colorado and she lives in Michigan, and we are the best of friends.

Wendy also knows a lot about retirement, having worked as a retirement counselor for many years.

I'd be interested in hearing the stories of other retirees, and what happened to them on Day One of "taking the plunge" into the unknown and somewhat scary waters of retirement! I'm sure you have interesting stories to tell, so ta-ta for now, and all the best. Pete