OK, now I’m depressed

My brother in law retired on Friday. He is the same age as I am—56. How did this happen?

I first met Greg during my freshman year in college. He lived on the same floor section as I did, a few doors down on the other side of the hall. He had long, shoulder length hair as was the fashion then. I learned later that he loved all things Beatle which explained his hirsute style.

One day I walked into the dorm bathroom and there he was, towel wrapped around his waist, hair plastered all over, mopping up a lot of water. He looked at me and said, “I did a bad thing.” He looked a little scary, so I just edged out of the room. At this point, I didn’t know he was my brother in law, of course. At the time he was dating a townie, but soon he was seen with a girl with long blonde hair that we all called “the hippie chick.”

Greg and two of our friends moved into a house out in the country during sophomore year. It was in that house that I met Kathy, thus putting into motion a series of events that eventually resulted in the brother in law thing. The “hippie chick” was Kathy’s sister, after all.

He was in the College of Fine Arts, a painting major. We still have one of his works from that time. By virtue of the fact that we were dating sisters, we spent some time together over the next few years. Kathy and I were married in April 1971. Greg and Lois were married four months later, albeit secretly. Why it had to be secret I can’t remember, but maybe they didn’t want to strain her parents’ finances as they had just married off a daughter a few months earlier, but it stayed a secret (till now, I guess) and Kathy’s parents never knew. They are both gone now, so it doesn’t matter. About a year after their clandestine union, they had a nice church wedding and no one was the wiser.

As we stumbled through our twenties, my career moves took us to Illinois and New Jersey, while he stayed here in Ohio. He had several jobs, but art wasn’t a big seller, so he interviewed for a position in a cabinet maker union apprenticeship program. He won a spot by answering the question “Why do you want this job?” in a surprisingly unique way. After hours of hearing tired clichés like “I really wanna work with my hands” from carpenter wannabes, the interviewers were pleased with Greg’s response: “I want a job with a future.” A simple but elegant wish.

Later he described his job in a display building company as “thirty years of spray painting plywood.” Occasionally he got to drive the truck.

So here he was, the only college educated guy in the place, but he stuck it out. You need to log at least 54,000 hours in order to retire, and so he did, hour after dreary hour. All during those years he chipped away at his art, illustrating comic books for a bummed out nutball named Harvey Pekar. Eventually those books lent their name to the movie “American Splendor.”

Now he will have all the time in the world to pursue his art. Looks like he’s living every baby boomer’s dream. Well, at least this boomer’s fantasy.