A co-worker in the break area asked me how I was, and I said, "I'm short."
He said, "What do you mean?" He was ex-military, so I knew he knew the term.
"Today's my last day," I said, "I completed my assignment. The grant ran out."
I was hired as part of an economic-stimulus-package, trickle-down grant to develop
student guides/curriculum outlines, or Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, avec
bells and whistles (color pictures, charts and graphs, schematic diagrams, logic prints,
formulas and equations). "No shit," he said. "What are you going to do?"
"Stay at the house and write my own books," I said. "Write the great American
nonfiction novel, with a lot of poetry in it. A lot of fishing stories."
"And you're okay with that? What are you? Semi-retired? How old
are you, if I may ask?" "70," I said. "I'm as happy as a dead pig in
the sunshine. Please don't throw me in that briar patch, Br'er Fox."
He broke into a grin. "That's great," he said. "That's want I want to do
some day. I turn bowls, you know." Woodwork. Not pottery.
Everybody needs to have a hobby.