My New Career

My New Career

I’ve lived in my neighborhood for about a year now. Had to downsize seriously when I retired. They called it retired, I called it booted out.

Yes, I was a bit old to be working a nine to five. I could have retired at sixty-five, but I liked being busy. As I passed seventy five, I suspect corporate started worrying about the financial burden if I suddenly fell apart, physically, or mentally…

Anyway, here in my little apartment, I watched TV, read books, boring. I didn’t know many of my neighbors, not being the social type, but I saw them and waved as required.

Being on the ground floor I got a good view of the band of kids running around. Four kids with nothing to do, living in a neighborhood of old fogies. They weren’t really trouble so much as bored. But they managed to get in trouble because of it.

One day I caught them trying to “accidentally” knock a package off my neighbors front step. Granted it was an interesting looking package, but they were about to get caught. I knew Gary would be getting home within minutes, he would go straight to their parents.

I went out and “caught” them, telling them they had better scoot! They pulled the typical kid “we weren’t doing anything” act. Just as we were going through this, a car drove up and my neighbor got out.

“Hey what cha doing?” he said, looking at our group.

“The kids and were looking for some decent rocks to gather,” I said, quickly.

“Oh, cool. See ya later!” off he went into his apartment.

The kids looked at me and then one said, “Rocks? Cool!”

And my new career of thinking up things to do for ten year olds began.