When I was growing up, my family told me to get a hard-working job. It may
have been the very first thing they said to me. I bet I came out of my
mother 65 years ago, and they said, son, you need to know the value of
honest manual labor. They didn’t care how well I did in school, or how good
I was at socializing with the other kids. They could still remember the
great depression, even though a long time had passed for them already, and
they didn’t want me to go through the same problems they did. It was a nice
sentiment, but it wasn’t very forward-thinking. Since they didn’t value
education, I didn’t have much of a chance to explore my strengths, and learn
new skills. I went from one blue collar job to the next. This factory, that
warehouse, this office basement, that farm. I know it sounds like I kept
getting fired, but that’s not what it was like. I would just keep getting
better opportunities, or have to move somewhere else. In those days, finding
work wasn’t all that hard. People always needed people like me to do the
things that they didn’t want to do, and which robots hadn’t figured out how
to do...yet. That’s kind of what this story is about. I had heard that
someone or something would be coming for our jobs, but I didn’t know that
meant every job I was possibly qualified to do. I didn’t know the last job I
lost would be the last I ever had. I had picked up so many skills along the
way, but it seemed like they were all out of date before I was old enough to
survive on my retirement. You may think I was bitter, but I wasn’t. I saw it
coming. I am not against automation in general. I even made sure my kids got
themselves some skills that would make them indispensable within the
workforce. But my daddy didn’t teach me the same, so I was unprepared for it
to happen so soon.
I’m sure glad I raised my children differently than my parents did. It was a
bit of a double edged sword, though. Now that they were grown, and had built
great careers for themselves, they had more than enough amongst them to
support me and my wife in my early forced retirement. Her parents were even
worse. No daughter of theirs was going to work a day in her life. She was
expected to find a man to take care of her. That was meant to be my
responsibility, and I was failing everybody. Not once did my kids make me
feel bad about giving us money even though I wasn’t even 60 years old yet.
They said they were more than happy to give back what we gave to them. I
know that this happened. I know that I raised them, and taught them, and
helped them. It just didn’t feel like enough, and it felt like they were
giving back far too much comparatively. Things did not get any better as the
years went by. It was incredibly stressful, asking them for a little help
when my social security benefits weren’t enough. It was a little less
stressful when they started sending us what was basically an allowance, so
we didn’t have to ask, but it was still difficult. It was better for the
most part when they decided to set us up with some kind of fancy computer
account where money would automatically transfer from their banks to ours,
but in other ways, this was worse, because I felt like such a
disappointment. One thing I let go was my health. We chose to eat a lot of
fast food, because it’s cheaper, of course, and we wanted to stay frugal,
since we had not truly earned this money. On the upside, my early death is
going to release the kids from some of the burden. On the downside, I’m
worried about my wife’s health, and there’s also this annoying thing about
suffering a lethal heart attack at age 65. That’s not great.
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