Patrick Fanning - Not Dead Yet: ...and One or Two Other Good Things About Retirement

This is really the Introduction, but nobody reads those, so I call it chapter one.

This is where writers traditionally try to convince you to read their masterpiece by telling you why they are qualified to write it, how much hard work it was, which important people helped them, and so on. Im not going to bother because this book is obviously too short to be anybodys masterpiece.

Besides, if youre reading chapter 1, youve probably already paid for the book, so Ill be getting my 6.3 cents in royalties by and by whether you read it or not. Or perhaps you received this book as a gift, in which case were both already ahead of the game.

That said, I think this may be the best book Ive ever written. Certainly it was the most fun. But it wont be the best book you ever read because its nonfiction. The best books are made-up true stories like Huck Finn or The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Not Dead Yet, as you might guess from the title, is an irreverent look at retirement. I tried to write a reverent book first, but it was just too boring. I decided the book had to be funny or I would never get to the end of the damn thing.

But enough about me. Lets talk about you and retirement. Retirement is like a cliff that you approach very slowly, dither on the edge of, then jump off. After an exhilarating moment of free fall, you hit bottom and enter a long period of recuperation. Many people climb back up the cliff to re-enter the workforce for a while until they decide to jump off again. Wherever you are in this cycle, this is the book for you. Its written by me, the most qualified retirement expert in the galaxy, who has slaved away on it for twenty years with the help of sixteen Nobel Laureates.

No, just kidding. This is a toilet bookthe kind with short chapters that you leave in the bathroom and pick up when youre in there on other business. The material is meant to make you smile, improve your digestion, and present a few practical, commonsense suggestions about retirement that you probably could have figured out for yourself.

In writing this book, Ive discovered that there is a fine line between funny and stupid, so please skip over the stupid parts. There is also a fine line between funny and mean, which if I have crossed anywhere, oops, sorry. Not to mention the other fine lines between funny and weird, funny and silly, funny and lame, and so on. Funny is actually a tiny island in an ocean of fine lines. Welcome to my island, and I apologize if you get your feet wet.

When I turned fifty-five in 2002, AARP had thirty-six million members, but apparently they didnt have the one they really wanted: me. Nearly every day my mailbox held an invitation to join AARP, with glossy photos of Goldie Hawn or Paul McCartney or Steve Jobs begging me to join them in the joys of being an old-but-still-sexy person. The implication was that if I joined, I would become a hip elder celebrity like my pals Goldie and Paul and Steve.

Even though I knew it wasnt AARPs fault that I was fifty-five, I resented them pointing it out. At a time when I was desperately seeking the Fountain of Youth, they only offered me the Fountain of Direct Mail. Im afraid that I lost touch with reality and became a little paranoid about collecting the mail. I imagined I saw Paul Newman staking out my mailbox in an unmarked black NASCAR racer. I was afraid Angela Lansbury would jump out from behind the hedge and try to sell me long-term care insurance.

Then one night Jack Nicholson came to me in a dream and pointed out that the only thing stalking me was myselfthe specter of me as an old, retired guy lurking in my future. What you need to do, Jack said, toasting me with his highball, is get over yourself.

So after receiving fifty or sixty dollars worth of direct mail, I finally succumbed and sent in my twenty-five dollars to join AARP. But that didnt stop the direct-mail barrage. Every day there seemed to be some new communiqu from my soul mates at AARP, including more offers to join up, as if AARP had Alzheimers and had forgotten I already joined. I dont know how they make money this way. They must follow the same economic principle as Laurel and Hardy in an early one-reeler: Stan asks Ollie how they can make money spending three dollars to make a bottle of bathtub gin that they sell for two dollars. Ollie explains, What we lose on each single bottle well make up in volume.

Despite AARPs snail-mail excesses and dubious grasp of fiscal matters, every retired person should join up so we dont fall behind the demographic power curve. Statisticians say that seventy-seven million baby boomers will start retiring in big numbers in 2010. We will be huge in politics, a groundswell of Geezer Power, and AARP will be the most powerful lobbying organization in Washington.