The Humiliation of Being New Again
Sometimes retirement feels like the first day of school.
He kept fiddling with the remote controller. Not because he was ready to drive. It gave his hands a job. He was doing that thing people do when they are anxious. He turned the plastic trimming knobs back and forth. He rubbed his thumb over the rubber steering wheel. The tension in his own knuckles was painfully obvious.
Arthur stood at the edge of the lake.
He had introduced himself to a few of the attendees earlier. Right about now, he just wanted to jump into the water and disappear.
Did you even think you would need to start again?
The first day of school. A first date.
That terrifying moment at a new workplace where you wondered how the hell you would survive.
Those were the milestones that were supposed to be firmly in the rear view mirror.
We tell ourselves we are done with the new kid phase. We are supposed to have life figured out by now. Instead, you find yourself a learner driver all over again about to do a parallel park.
In Arthur’s case, the venue was a local pond. The vehicle was a miniature remote controlled boat. An enthusiast’s pastime.
The enthusiasm, however, had yet to arrive.
He lowered his brand new Vector XS into the water. He powered her up. He carefully adjusted the trimming dials. He throttled forward. He was making way.
Making way too much way, as it turned out.
Arthur froze as the air caught beneath the hull. It lifted the boat slightly. Then a little too much. The craft went entirely airborne. It flipped a spectacular, violent 360 degrees through the air.
“Blowout!” the others yelled from down the bank.
Oh, it can be a cruel world.
Like the kid who was dressed by his mum in a homemade uniform for the first day of school, ripe for the waiting bullies.
Or the 19 year old staring at the computer screen realising the little white lie she told in the hiring interview might now be coming back to bite her.
This is the paradox. What you thought was the end in retirement is just the beginning.
The first day of something.
The youngest. The newbie. Unskilled and underprepared.
How else can it be.
And to be honest, when you look back in five or ten years’ time, you would not have wanted it any other way.
Arthur couldn’t move. He stood completely paralysed on the shoreline. His fingers locked tight around the plastic remote control. Releasing it might make things worse. He couldn’t even bring himself to look for help.
His heart hammered against his ribs while his bright red hull bobbed upside down in the water. A helpless plastic turtle.
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The other boats zipped relentlessly around the course. Their high pitched motors whined as they sliced past his wreckage.
To Arthur, they felt less like toys and more like a crowd mocking him. Just like the people standing around him. This was a massive mistake. He should have stayed home. Home was safe. Nobody could see him fail there.
But they did see him fail. Just like the time he wore that shirt out thinking he looked cool only to be the butt of jokes for years. Or when he showed off in front of his friends resulting in a trip to emergency.
Age doesn’t give you a right of passage to wisdom. Learning and repeated behaviour does.
And Arthur, on this day, was at ground zero.
A man in a safari shirt stepped up beside him on the bank.
“The Vector XS has a self-righting hull,” the man said, extending a long fiberglass boat hook toward Arthur’s stranded vessel. “You don’t even need me to fish it out. Just give it a quick burst of full reverse, then slam it into ahead. The torque of the motor flips it right back over.”
“Right. Reverse, then ahead,” Arthur muttered.
His throat felt like sandpaper. He gripped his transmitter. His knuckles turned white. He squeezed the throttle trigger backward.
The lake erupted as the tiny propeller spun in reverse. It threw up a miniature wall of spray. Arthur quickly pushed the trigger forward. With a wet, heavy slap, the red boat rolled itself right side up. The hull sliced cleanly back into the water.
“See?” The man smiled, extending a hand. “I’m Greg. And trust me, every single RC boater on this lake has done a full 360 blowout. If you aren’t flipping ’em, you aren’t driving ‘em.”
Arthur looked back out over the water, his boat was idling now. Safely righted. Waiting for its next command.
The panic in his chest hadn’t entirely vanished, but as he watched the little red hull cutting through the ripples, a tiny, unexpected spark finally arrived.
There is a difference between schooling and work and joining some type of club upon retirement. The first two are expected; the last is a choice. And avoiding that first day feeling is a well-trodden path.
What if every person who retired was made to enlist in an activity. A conscription of sorts.
Just like school.
Just like work.
If you couldn’t choose an activity, your name was pulled out of a hat and that is where you were sent.
Mary to crochet, Janette to Pickle Ball and Arthur. To remote control boat racing.
Time being the magician it is even when forced you’ll eventually form memories, associates, friends and structure.
But you are not a conscript. You have free will.
That wonderful scary anxious moment you get to be new all over again is done willingly.
Who would have thought you’d do this to yourself.
Even when you’re old enough to know better.
And Arthur was old enough. And now better, for the experience.
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