As many of you know, I am currently on vacation in the Philippines — a working vacation of sorts, if you count life work, in that I have met for the first time my five stepchildren, two stepgrandchildren, father-in-law, the sole remaining sib of my wife’s whom I had not met in the States, and about 150 other relations whom my wife has absolved me of the need to keep straight. (I’ll meet them when they visit — which I’m told they all will, if they can help it.)
I also met my wife’s friend, principal of the school that my stepkids attend, which is evidently (having been chosen because of how much my wife values education) among the best in Pampanga. (That is the province containing Clark Air Base, which — until Mt. Pinatubo erupted after having waited until the Cold War was safely over — was along with Subic Bay the major U.S. base in the region.) The friend is turning 60, so competent that the school’s owner has begged her to stay, but is going to emigrate to the U.S. instead. After all, she said, you’re supposed to retire at 60.
Oh really, I said, and after some stupid blundering on my part it came out that you were supposed to retire by 60 but had to retire after 65. “Had to” as in “cannot legally work.” Cannot take jobs away from the younger people who need them. I had lawyer’s questions about how truly true this was — what if you are self-employed, I don’t think I thought to ask, but there were others, and from both her and my wife the answer was firm. Cannot work. You lived on savings, on the support of your family, on the kindness of charity — or not at all.