I’ve Become a Different Person.

I am a product of the rural Midwest. I grew up in central Indiana in a cross road community that was even smaller than TV’s Hooterville. There was a two room school house where I attended first grade, general store, a neighbor who owned a small farm, another who worked as carpenter, the community phone company where the switchboard operator(yes we had crank phones our number was three longs and a short) lived and my parents house with a small mechanics shop my father ran.

Life there was, as you might imagine, very different than the big city. Our house was never locked; there wasn’t even a dead bolt on the doors. I seriously doubt that there even was a key to lock them. I was raised to respect anyone older than me. I didn’t know a single bad person. We were a work all week and church on Sunday family occasionally going to “town” for shopping when Mom dictated.

I retired in June of 2003 and moved away from the Midwest. Since then I have had time to reflect on where I came from and how I got here. I have come to realize than I am completely different person than the one that l grew up in that unbelievable small community in Indiana. No longer do I blindly trust and respect those older than me as I was raised. Frankly I have learned not to trust anyone especially professionals!

Since retiring, a short list of issues contains; an incompetent lawyer I hired to do estate planning, a phone company that can’t figure out how to separate area codes from prefixes, a dentist that over treated, ruined my tooth and lied to the insurance company about the treatment provided. Dentists are number one on my list of not to be trusted. I have to include in my short list the customer service reps that you get when you call for help with an issue you might have with a product or service. Not only can you not understand what they say when you finally do get the information is usually bogus. Hardly a month goes by that I don’t run into total incompetence.

A major concern I have is our healthcare. What if one of us becomes majorly (sic) ill? Will my healthcare professional correctly identify the problem? I do know one thing for certain, no one is going to pick, poke, cut, medicate, drill or fill until I fully understand all about it. I won’t engage the services of any professional before first researching the subject to my complete understanding.

5 years ago I wouldn’t have thought of such things!

So, here I am wondering how I became diametrically opposite of what I used to be. My wife and I have discussed this at great length. We can’t decide if it’s just the place we now live or if it’s something that exists everywhere and we never noticed it during our working days because we were simply too busy to notice.

Is this a side effect of retirement? Is the first stage of senility? I can’t help but wonder if any other retirees have noticed the same things I have?