Wake Me When the Meteor Hits

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It's hard not to give up when you get old.
Last week, I attended my own going away party, which was pretty much a preview of the wake I can expect when I'm dead.
"Thanks Rose," one of the managers said. "We really enjoyed your stories."
I looked around the room, and realized that I should have stopped showing pictures like this one to my coworkers. Here I am with an 80 plus year old with a nose that is actually drooping from the weight of old age. Jean Chretien and I go way back, I tell them.

Then I realize half of them don't know who Jean Chretien is.
That's because the entire federal government is now being run by millennials, little people with tiny little bodies and hair that would scare most combs. Most of them weren't even born when I worked in the Prime Minister's Office. I'd tried to explain the Constitution to a few of them over coffee once, but I couldn't be heard over the pings on their phones.
I overheard another of my managers who was helpfully putting me up for another job -- God Bless Her! She was telling people that I was a retired person looking for something to fill her time.
I wanted to take the telephone cord and wrap it around her pretty little neck but then realized that the phone was cordless. People in the government never talk on their actual desk phones.
In the eight months, I worked for the Queen, not once did I get a call on the desk phone which seemed like a relic from another age, like my patent leather shoes.

I'm nearly 63, and I feel like a teenager, except for the bad knee, the cranky opposite hip, and the boobs that now face downwards.
Sure, I get tired once in a while.
I don't live on Energy drinks or Diet Coke.
I'll admit to having to deek into a quiet room for half an hour, now and again, to take a little siesta but that was mostly because I didn't have enough to do.
Thanks to climate change, there was no escaping into the good old fresh air -- which was usually filled with frost -- and I didn't want to take a chance and break a hip.
So I made do.
Until I was told to go home because my contract was over.
And so now here I sit, alone at the computer, waiting to be eaten by these two.

I want to work but I don't want to work that hard.
Most of the work for old people involves folding towels or trying to convince people to buy credit cards they don't need.
It's work that is hard on the bones and results in atrophy of the brain.
I want to use my brain, the one that has accumulated vast amounts of knowledge over the years, the one that gives me perspective, and possesses enough institutional memory to be a frickin' library.
Unfortunately, there isn't much work for people who are forced to spend half their paycheques in the salon getting their roots done. People in Canada don't care about old people. They want to take our money at the slots, and sell us funeral plots.
So I'm back on the under-employment line waiting until somebody notices that I smell bad because I'm past my expiry date.
Frankly, it makes me want to scream.

Instead, I got a nice card, a Unicorn mug, and a half a dozen cupcakes I will not eat.
The party was nice.
One young woman hugged me and actually told me she loved me.
I think she mistook for her mom.

Since I was told about my lay off -- which reminds me of another off -- I've been trying hard to find some way not to feel sad.
I tried pot but discovered I was allergic to it, so much so my face grew three sizes.

I bought an entire room full of exercise equipment which is handy for hanging bras on but not for much else.

On Friday, I had an idea. I decided I'd try to go back to school.
So I called up the Carleton School of Journalism and asked about finally finishing my degree program which I gleefully abandoned 40 years ago when I secured my first shiny new journalism job (which ended two years later when the newspaper folded, but I digress).
I left my four year program one credit short which was stupid I know but it was the 70s and I had just got a job chasing rock bands, and what 20 something could say no to that?
Anyway, I always thought I'd go back some day, and it seemed to me that day had come.
So I bravely picked up the phone and enquired after my new project.
Alas.
The stern woman on the other end informed me that I would have to start all over again -- that or take the Masters program -- because the degree requirements for journalism had changed while my credits fossilized.
I thought to myself: what on Earth? Or WTF in today's lingo.
How could journalism have changed that much?
Sure, I started the program with a typewriter. I can even describe the sight and sound of the pneumatic tube as it took my copy downwards to the newspaper composing room.
But I have learned some skills since then. I can emoji that shit out of people, but I like to use words..
I had to wonder how much had journalism actually changed?
Aren't the facts still the facts?
The only thing I think has changed is that journalists spend too much time talking to each other, and not enough to sources. They also spend too many hours on Twitter being Twitty.
Oh well.
Back to my fledgling academic career.
A Masters, eh?
I began to fantasize about being a teaching assistant who would tell all my war stories to little kids, and they would be forced to listen. I could write books they would be forced to buy because I created the curriculum!
Then I looked at the website.
French.
In order to qualify for the program, I would have to speak French.
On what planet would I use French?
I worked in the government and I didn't have to use French.
I couldn't imagine knowingly phoning up French people who would be sources for my stories.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against French.
I tried for 40 years to learn the language with no success.
I don't have the attention span for French.
Heck, I don't have the attention span to make a pot roast from memory.
The way I look at it, by the time I learned French, I would indeed be dead.
And who needs a Masters when you're dead?
I'm going back to sleep now.
Wake me when the meteor hits.