A Child's View of Retirement

After a Christmas break, a teacher asked her young pupils how they spent their
holidays. One small boy wrote the following...
" We always used to spend Christmas with Grandpa and Grandma. They used to
live here in a big brick home, but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to
Florida. Now they live in a place with a lot of other retarded people. They all
live in little tin boxes. They ride on big three-wheeled tricycles and they all
wear nametags because they don't know whom they are. They go to a big building
called a wrecking hall; but if it was wrecked, they got it fixed because it's
all right now. They play games and do exercises there, but they don't do them
very good."


"There is a swimming pool there. They go into it and just stand there with
their hats on. I guess they don't know how to swim."


As you go into their park, there is a dollhouse with a little man sitting in
it. He watches all day so they can't get out without him seeing them. When they
can sneak out they go to the beach and pick up shells that they think are
dollars."


"My Grandma used to bake cookies and stuff, but I guess she forgot how. Nobody
cooks, they just eat out. They eat the same thing every night, Early Birds. Some
of the people are so retarded that they don't know how to cook at all, so my
Grandma and Grandpa bring food into the wrecked hall and they call it 'pot
luck'."


"My Grandma says Grandpa worked hard all his life and earned his retardment. I
wish they would move back up here, but I guess the little man in the dollhouse
won't let them out.