NO I AM NOT RETIRED, I'M JUST OLD
Why do people assume that if you’re old you must be retired?
This is the snarky Sunday edition of Snarky Senior — the newsletter from Erica Manfred, which you can read about here. If you like it and don’t want to miss an issue, you can get it in your inbox by subscribing.
Why do people assume that if you’re old you must be retired? RBG didn’t give up her seat on the Supreme Court even when she was 80 with terminal cancer. Nancy Pelosi is still striding around in heels and suits at 80. Biden is running for the presidency at 79. About Trump the less said the better.
When I was a kid my parents considered retirement the Holy Grail. They didn’t like working, even though they had professional jobs—my mom was a teacher and my dad was an architect. They both wanted to retire as soon as possible and do what they really loved—photography and travel. They envisioned living in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, as happy expats. Work was something you did to save money so you could retire and pursue your cultural interests. Ironically my dad got Parkinson’s in his late sixties so their “retirement” was spent stuck in Century Village in Florida, a fate they had profoundly wanted to avoid.
Retirement made perfect sense to me when I was a kid because I couldn’t imagine having a job you didn’t want to leave as soon as possible.
When you’re a kid everyone asks what you want to be when you grow up. I don’t remember wanting to be anything in particular. In the 1950s women were mostly wives and mothers and I knew I didn’t want to be one of them. There weren’t any other attractive options.
For a while I thought I wanted to be an actress, the glamourous ingénue who the leading man swooned over. But I was always chosen for roles like Olive Bunker Hill--staunch, hearty New Englander—who I played in high school in a knockoff of an Agatha Christie play. (Schools are still performing this clunker according to a notice in a local paper: “Olive Bunker-Hill (played by senior Bitzy Mitzel), enjoys regaling the guests with tales of ships lost as sea and peg-leg captain-ghosts. The five guests wonder if her tales are coming to fruition in their weekend encounter.” (Bitzy Mitzel has a future in Hollywood based on her name alone.)
My theatrical aspirations were quashed after I botched a role in a Tennessee Williams play in college. I totally blanked out on my monologue and fled the stage. I was so mortified that I can’t remember the character or the play to this day. That was the end of my theatrical aspirations.
I started a career as a job hopper. I drifted from welfare worker, to tenant advocate, to taxi driver, to caseworker, to probation officer, to temporary secretary. I once wound up in a typing pool—which resembled a gulag with row after row of headphoned women transcribing dictation. I fled.
I got closest to my dream job in 1968 at a British news service affiliated with NBC News. I was once again a disgruntled secretary but my office was in the newsroom at NBC News--a huge room arrayed with desks—women on the outer rim as secretaries to the men in the offices. Huntley and Brinkley would wander through occasionally. Young men were in the middle writing the news.. They had started as copy boys and worked their way up. I desperately wanted to be one of them but girls did not work their way up—they started as secretaries and ended there. There was only one female reporter, Liz Trotta, and everyone said she “slept her way to the top.” Eventually I was fired for being surly. I was especially surly when told to serve tea to my boss and his visitors.
The women’s movement hadn’t arrived yet, so I bounced from one low paying dead end job to another. I drifted into writing the same way. I was laid off from my caseworker job and wrote a mystery novel while collecting unemployment insurance. It didn’t get published though it did find a top agent.
I found my voice when I starting writing for New York’s fabled Village Voice by accident. I didn’t have had the nerve to actually submit anything other than a personal ad to the classifieds (in the days before online dating) where I described myself as an overweight writer. My ad garnered a response from a well known cartoonist, who described himself as a “fat fancier.” He wasn’t interested in dating me since at a mere 225 pounds I was too thin for him (he had a 500-pound girlfriend) but he did need a writer. He’d promised to write a story about fat fashion for Mary Peacock, editor of the fashion column at the Voice. Like many people who think anyone can be a writer, he hadn’t realized that writing, like illustrating, took talent. He asked me to write the story, which I did, and he drew a clever illustration.
Fat Fashion Frustration on Fifth Avenue launched my career as a fashion columnist at the Voice which luckily didn’t demand any familiarity with actual fashion. That got me into Cosmopolitan and other magazines. After the Voice changed hands, I kept writing while the magazine business died a painful death and pay for writers plummeted.
I’ve been struggling as a writer ever since.
But at least I discovered what I wanted to do when I grew up and wound up doing it. Writing is the only thing I know how to do. It’s the only thing I love doing, the only activity that truly engages me, besides sex. Since I’ve aged out of the dating pool that’s not an option.
So when people ask if I’m retired I say no. I answer the question, “What do you do?” by telling them I’m a writer. I usually get a condescending nod, and a response like, “That’s a nice hobby.” I’ve stopped bothering to protest that I’m a professional who actually gets paid for my work.
If some people—like elderly politicians and Supreme Court justices don’t have to defend their right to not retire--why are the rest of us supposed to fade away quietly?
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When asked, I describe myself as “an author and medical writer.” Try calling yourself “author” instead of “writer," Erica; you’re likely to get a very different response. Especially if you can think of something to add.
I’ve always thought of “author” as someone who’s published a book, in contrast to someone who’s placed magazine articles, for example. But I decided to look up the definitions.
Here’s one definition I found:
An author is someone whose written work has been published. In addition to producing published work, people who write are considered authors when they originate the ideas and content of their written work. For this reason, most authors are writers, but not all writers are considered to be authors. Feb 13, 2020 (from Writer vs. Author: What's the Difference? - 2020 – MasterClass; www.masterclass.com › articles › writer-vs-author-whats-t.)
Interesting thought—originate the ideas and content . . .
I didn't know you wanted to be an actress and I can certainly see you at NBC News getting surly for not wanting to serve tea to upper management. I laughed out loud. You're a writer and a damned good one. Keep 'em coming.
I didn't want to be a wife and mother, like Loni and you. Translated: I didn't go the path laid out by others. I chose my own path. Like Loni and you.