Chapter 259: How's work?

Ghosts resembling my grandkids lounge in the front room. Mouths open. Eyes glazed. Arms and legs sprawled randomly.

 

On the TV screen is a group of active kids playing, jumping, drawing and making creative and beautiful works of art. My grandkids look like a different species from the kids in the TV.

 

My grandkids passively watch the active creative kids. They also watch some energetic, creative, bubbly, good looking young adults.  My grandkids don’t resemble and behave like the kids in the TV. I doubt that I resemble or behave like the adults in the TV.

 

Time to go for a walk. We wander. We approach some vaguely familiar people.

 

I ask them: How’s work?

 

I then say:  Is your work affected by Covid 19? Everything else is.

 

Their attitude is typical. They give voluminous answers. They love talking about themselves and their jobs. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody does. Their job is the special subject where they know all the right answers.

 

They talk and we listen. They never ask us anything and then I realise why. We are retired. There is nothing to ask us. Can’t ask us how is retirement going. Can’t ask what we plan on doing. Can’t pretend they care. They know I have erected my tombstone. I just have to add the date.

 

When I worked I was like these people. I always talked about myself and my work. When working everybody who came to see me talked about my work. They talked about what I knew about. They had come to my place of work to talk about my work. I was the man.

 

Now I don’t work there is nothing to talk about.