In The Cold And Dark

Driving to work this morning was like moving through a tunnel of wind and random white flakes.  I was pushed sideways at points, and the road was beginning to acquire the slick sheen of danger. Such a drive makes one grateful for a safe arrival. Such a drive makes one grateful for the modern conveniences like a good heater in the car.

I am not well-liked at my job.

I looked around one day and realized that I am the oldest full-time staff member there. Time, that trickster, has crept up on me and played one of his better tricks. This realization was preceded by months of curious introspection about why I no longer find the jokes among my coworkers to be funny, about why they seem unteachable and somewhat frightening, about why I recoil at how they dress and decorate their bodies and conduct themselves. The easy coarseness of the females and the soft acquiescence of the males — they seem to blend into each other with no distinctions, no lines, no boundaries.

And yet none of them are very good at what they do.

I have become aware that my very competence is a threat, because it is a rebuke. If I perform a routine assignment with comparative ease, I am looked at with resentment. After all, who do I think I am? Such arrogance in a fossil, in the Walking Obsolete.

Such dreams I once had for my life, for my future, for my professional accomplishments. Ah, but that trickster time…he got me on that one, too. Almost all of what I dreamed has flitted past me into the surrounding dark, like this morning’s snowflakes. And what I have left is a dark, slick road with deep ditches on either side.

I am at the age —now there’s an expression I never prepared to use — I am at the age where everything becomes more finite, and yet more mysterious at the same time.  Among the young people with whom I work, the young people who tolerate me more than work with me, I am irrelevant. Who cares if I possess and display a good work ethic? This simply means that I am an overachiever, or that I am trying to curry favor with management. This is laughable to me, knowing as I do that management is, if anything, more contemptuous of me than my coworkers.

Perhaps some of their reaction to me is understandable. I make more mistakes than I once did. And even though on my worst day, I show more skill and discipline than the rest of them on their best days… they take delight in pointing out things that I forget or overlook. They are circling me now, looking for the hamstring, picking out their target, because they know my teeth are worn down and my joints will betray me.

And writing these words, I have confirmation that I really am an old man: my observations are pedestrian and predictable. There are no surprises. There are only disappointments.

The question is put to me during quiet moments at work: will I retire, or will I be retired?

It is a bleak thing to be at the mercy of those who have no mercy. Did I have mercy when I was younger? Again, time has tricked me. My memories are sometimes unreliable.

These days, it is easy to be in the cold and the dark no matter where I am.

But still…I have hope. My wife and my dreams remain with me, and they give me this hope.

~ S. K. Orr