As promised a couple days ago, here is my first ever published piece. As I’ve said, and will continue to say, being asked to submit something for the official Illinois retired fire-guy biannual (that’s right btw. I can never remember, so I looked it up) newsletter/magazine *not it’s official name* is one of the thrills of my writing life. I figure once a new article gets published there, it should be ok to put my stuff up here for the rest of the world to see, right? As long as I don’t get a “cease and desist” order from someone, I’ll continue to cycle these through here every six months.
This one, as you can see, was a brief introduction to the members of the Illinois Association of Retired Firefighters. So, without further adieu-
Let me start by briefly telling you a little about me…
I just retired from Downers Grove Professional Fire Fighters Local 3234 after twenty five years on the job. Well, that’s not exactly true. As I write this, I’m still on-the-job. Literally. I’m sitting at the kitchen table at Station #3, watching a couple of new guys prep dinner (chicken enchiladas) and trying to figure out what I’m going to say here. My last shift will be September 15th and my last day on the books will be September 29th. I need to have this to the printer by September 1st and, deadlines being, well, deadlines, I’m working on it now.
And let me just say, when President Schrepfer asked me if I would like to write something to be published in the quarterly retired guy newsletter (not the official name, but you know what I mean) I jumped at the chance.
But back to where I was originally headed.
I’m retired.
That sounds weird.
Where in the heck did twenty five years go? It feels like I just walked in the door about six months ago. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s time. Everything aches but nothing hurts, so it seems like the time is right. I have days where I feel really good, like maybe I’m 40 years old again (I’m 58 by the way) and I have days where I feel like I’m 75 years old. I just said that the other day, to a cousin I hadn’t seen in a very long time. She just looked at me and said “I’m 75”. She wasn’t impressed with my choice of ages, apparently. In my defense, she was using a cane, so…
But I digress.
So, what does a retired guy do anyway? And I’m not even trying to be a smart aleck when I ask that. I mean, I’ve got a little bit of an idea since I don’t currently work a side job, but I’m pretty sure once the newness wears off, I’m going to be needing a little more to do besides walking the dog twelve times a day. I do, in all honesty, plan to devote a good portion of my newly found leisure time to writing more, I’ve had a blog that I’ve been writing on (at?) for the last seven or eight years and I’d like to flesh that out into something more, perhaps a book, but I’m not yet convinced I can make that work, sooooo.
Sorry, we just got back from three calls back-to-back-to-back and I lost my train of thought. I’m going to miss that. Not the losing my train of thought part, the running calls part. I take great pride in the fact that I’ve been at the busiest house in town for 15 of my 25 years, mostly here at the end of my career. I don’t understand why most of these kids today don’t want to work at the busy house.
That’s another reason I know I’m ready to retire; I say “I don’t know why these kids” a lot lately.
Ok, I think I’m running out of room so, even though I haven’t really accomplished anything here, I’d better wrap it up. I’m looking forward to this new phase in my life, the friends of mine that are retired all seem pretty happy, and I can’t wait to jump in and see what comes next.
One last thing…
Who shows me the secret handshake? We have one, don’t we?
There you have it. I must say I was pleased with it, and the Pres. was too, so I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice. And if anyone didn’t care for it, well, take comfort in the knowledge that I got paid exactly as much as you did for reading it, lol.
Peace