Welcome to Episode #6, the penultimate post in our short series exploring various tips for the newly retired. Do you fear that retirement is nothing more than flip-flop tan lines and an inability to correctly identify the current day of the week? This blog’s for you.
Or perhaps you feel a bit like poor Frodo at the end of all
things—the One Ring destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, the Fellowship dissolved,
the tale entrusted to faithful Samwise—and now, as you board the Elven ship bound
for the West, you wonder what comes next.
(Spoiler alert: you get seasick.)
This blog’s for you, too. Welcome
aboard.
Now that we’re sure you’re in the right place, we can turn our full attention to the following Retirement Tip of the Day:
- Tip #13: Don’t let the old man in, now don’t!
I sincerely hope this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this advice, because quite frankly, I have neither the time nor the energy to explain it to you right now. It's well past my normal afternoon nap time, and as they say, when the age is in, the wit is out. But I’m sure you’ll get the gist of it on your own.
Giving credit where credit is due, I’ll admit that I first
heard Retirement Tip #13 a few years ago from the Honorable Sage of Lakewood,
Randy the Younger, who’s narrowly avoided the title “Venerable” by being a
couple of years my junior. I knew
immediately what Randy meant as soon as he said it, a sure sign that the old
man was lurking nearby even then. This
tip—true for women as well as men, despite its masculine phrasing—reminds us
never to treat retirement as an automatic invitation to grow old, to give up, to
go gentle into that good night.
Good advice, and easy enough to follow, were it not for the
fact that it is often difficult to spot that crafty old man sneaking in. You let your guard down, even for a moment, and
quick as you can say, “Bob's your uncle,” the most unusual things begin to
happen. Instead of a brief trip to Dick’s
Sporting Goods for your next pair of Reebok running shoes, you find yourself at
DSW, drifting into the Rockport aisle.
From there, you start wondering about that SAS store in the strip mall down
the street—maybe they have something in your size? And the parking there is so convenient!
Fortunately for us, I found a diagnostic self-help quiz in my
July ’25 issue of The Stoic Recliner that can help us determine our
relative proximity to the old man. (Thinking
of subscribing to The Stoic Recliner? Don’t. It’ll
quadruple your postal intake of AARP, Fisher Investments, and Viking Cruise solicitations. Friend, spare yourself.)
Anyway, here’s the quiz, which the magazine has helpfully
titled:
Have You Let the Old Man In?
Give yourself…
- 5 points for every pair of reading glasses you own
- 10 points if you refer to your daily walk as “getting your steps in”
- 30 points if you’ve taken a cruise that included a lecture on the Panama Canal
- 20 points for every non-compulsory visit you’ve made to a U.S. Presidential Museum
- 25 points if you’ve installed a bird feeder and you monitor it like NORAD
- 15 points if you leave voicemails that begin with “It’s just me…”
- 5 points for every hour you’ve driven to and from Shakespeare festivals
- 15 points for every Viking River Cruise brochure stashed in your bathroom reading cabinet
- 25 points for having a bathroom reading cabinet
- 40 points if your primary consideration in selecting a destination for a gala night on the town is the availability of convenient free parking
If your final score exceeds your total cholesterol count, you are in danger of letting the old man in. Nota bene: If you don’t know your total cholesterol count, then you’re probably good to go. No worries, mate!
Well, how’d you score?
Don’t be down on yourself; I did poorly, too. Take courage—I have two pieces of good news
for you:
Good News #1: It’s never too late to turn things around. The mortar of your zeal has yet to congeal. Countless individuals have reached their peak
achievements after turning 60. Here are
just a few; let them be a source of encouragement and inspiration for you:
- Grandma Moses - Took up painting at age 78, becoming a folk-art icon with museum shows and mass-market fame
- Laura Ingalls Wilder - Published her first “Little House” book at age 64, launching a beloved children’s series and literary legacy
- Colonel Sanders - Franchised his first KFC restaurant at age 62, turning a roadside recipe into a global fast-food empire
- Cato the Elder – I honestly have no idea what Cato the Elder did, but his last name is a dead giveaway. You’d have to think he was a late bloomer, right? Sorry, Mister the Elder, I’ll look you up on Wikipedia after my nap. If I remember.
· Good News #2: We don’t have to let The Stoic Recliner define old age for us; there are plenty of areas where that quiz is just plain wrong. For example, Shakespeare festivals are not merely an old person’s game—I have spotted many happy young adults there too. Perhaps they’re happy because their parents bought their tickets, but I suspect it’s more than that. They’re having a genuinely good time. If you haven’t been to a festival recently, don’t be afraid of the old man - go!
I personally recommend the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and if
you’re wondering what it’s like, let me set the scene for you. After a 6-hour drive across a mostly desert
landscape, you arrive at your destination in comfortable Cedar City. There’s ample time to check into your hotel,
stretch your legs, and generally freshen up before the night’s festivities. After making yourself presentable, you walk
down Main Street to your favorite Mexican restaurant. The quesadilla is delicious. As your entrée plate is cleared, you consider
your options. You could wander over to
the festival early for the pre-show lecture, but let’s be honest—you won’t. The margarita’s cold, and though you’ve been
steadily working the chips and salsa since the appetizer round, a respectable
pile still demands your attention. Relax.
You’ve earned it.
After dinner, you leisurely stroll over to the festival
grounds, and there you see it—opening before you like a clearing in Arden, rich
in wonder—the Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre.
You take your playbill and find your seats—no groundlings here—and
admire the warm brickwork and timbered balconies that echo the Globe of old. The sun dips low behind the hills, and as the
trumpets sound and the lights dim, a hush falls. The play begins. The play’s the thing. And yes, it is just as you like it.
You don’t need to be a Shakespeare buff to enjoy the festival. Alongside the Bard’s works, the lineup includes plenty of non-Shakespearean fare. Earlier this month, we caught a matinee of the hit musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder—tremendously funny, a real snapper. One of its central conceits is that a single actor plays eight different characters, each dispatched with gleeful theatricality. The show stands on its own comic merits, but it’s also fun to trace a line back to Shakespeare’s As You Like It, where Jacques reminds us that we, too, play many parts in the great drama of life - “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Here’s a thought. A
Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder features one actor playing eight
roles. In As You Like It, Jacques famously outlines seven ages of man. If you happen to catch both plays in a single
weekend, some part of you—some mathematical itch—may want to reconcile those
numbers. Here’s how I square it: Shakespeare’s
seventh age ends in oblivion—“sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans
everything.” But surely there’s an
eighth beyond that? A curtain call,
perhaps. A final flourish, followed by a
blowout cast party. If we believe that
all’s well that ends well, why not let it end with one last role? Perhaps they address these kinds of questions
during the pre-show lecture. You'll have to let me know.
Well, enough drama for one day. Time to wrap up this 6th episode
in our series, if only to get ready for the 7th and final episode. After my nap, of course. Many thanks to Mister the Younger for
providing us with our retirement tip of the day. It’s easy sometimes to think that your best
days are behind you—but the stage is still yours, and the spotlight’s waiting. Break a leg.
Until next time,
David
8/17/25
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