AN EMPLOYMENT CAROL

   This is an absolutely true story: I came home one night after talking to my site manager about the possibility of retiring from my part-time job this year. As I approached my front door the knocker eerily became her face. This was very scary because I don’t have a door knocker. I glanced down at the doorbell and there was a Post-it note saying,

“OUT OF ORDER--SEE ABOVE.”

   Before I could open the door and get inside, the face on the door groaned and said, “You will be visited by three spirits tonight.”

   “I don’t drink,” I replied and went inside.

  As I brushed my teeth before bed, my reflection in the mirror blurred and I saw a monster reflected in its depths. The ghoul had the head of J.C. Penney; the arms of Clarke’s Cafeterias with soapy dishwater dripping from its hands; and the chest of the university library building stacks full of dusty books. The hips looked like Petty Ford’s parts department complete with head and tail lights; the legs were Upholstery Supply Inc. delivery train tracks with little box cars full of sisal and foam; and the feet of clay I recognized as the local school district with fifteen toes on each foot (one for each year of my servitude).

   J.C. Penney opened his mouth and said, “We are the ghost of employment past. We have come to convince you that retirement is not a good idea. ”

   I laughed and turned out the light.

As I lay down in bed looking at the television, it came on without my touching the power button. A burly stagecoach driver urged his team of six horses onward. He looked straight at me and said, “Hee, Haw! I'm the ghost of present employment. It's my job to convince you to keep on workin’.”

   I got up, pulled the plug on the TV set, and turned the screen around to face the wall.

   In the middle of the night, I awoke from a dream. In the dream I had been traveling and vacationing whenever I wanted to, puttering around the house and attending the theater whenever my wife forced me to, going to sporting events and visiting my grandchildren whenever I needed to, volunteering for community service, reading good books, painting landscapes, doing family history research, taking self-improvement and university classes and writing the Great American novel and a classic children's picture book. That vision must have come from the ghost of future unemployment.

   I hurriedly got up and phoned Tiny Tim my investment counselor to check my three-legged retirement stool and see if I had everything in place. “Do I have a pension?” I asked.

   “Yup,” he replied.

   “Do my wife and I have Social Security?”

   “Yeah,” he said.

   “Do we have savings and investments?”

   “Yes,” he acknowledged.

   I went back to work knowing that if my site manager asked me if I was really ready to retire. I would be able to answer, “I believe in the ghost of future unemployment.”