by Royce Emley

Created on: February 10, 2007   Last Updated: March 25, 2007

I knew it was time to retire when my wife gave my favorite suit to Goodwill and a teenager showed up at my door wearing it on Halloween night dressed as Al Capone.

I knew when I threw away my alarm clock and let my bladder wake me up at 7am every morning.

I knew when I mentioned Pearl Harbor to my Grandson and he said he had heard of her. Didn't she use to sing with a big band?

I should have known when I discovered that the lifetime guarantees on everything I owned had expired.

I should have known when I turned on my computer and DOS 3.5 came up as my operating system.

I did start to realize after I found the kids at Burger King were getting paid more per hour than I ever made per hour in my life.

I started to know when I had a garage sale and everything had a brand name that no one had ever heard of.

It became apparent when I remembered the corner occupied by Walgreen's Drugstore was on the same corner where I went to buy drugs years ago when you didn't need a prescription. Or when I remembered milk being delivered to my front door in a bottle. But the most obvious was when the only things my friends could talk about every day was their bowel movements.

It was time to retire when the only way I could find my way home meant I had to find Publix food store first, everyone in Florida knows their way home from Publix.

Little things made it apparent when the only bird I could name was the Early Bird or like trying to lick a stamp that is self-adhesive. But the big one was when the can of Coffee in my kitchen cupboard was so old it was Pre-Columbian.

When I found out the house next door sold for $380,000 and I paid only $28,000 for mine. When all I ever watched on TV was the History channel and Turners Movie Classics.

I knew it was time when my Limo driver showed up at the front door one night in a new black suit and I thought he was the undertaker.

When all those brown spots on my arms and hands would not wash off.

When I dropped off my teeth at the dentist's office to be worked on. When I discovered I had a key ring with over 30 keys on it and all I really used were two.

I knew it was time to go when I ate at a fish restaurant and had a compulsion to tell the waitress out loud that "That was the best piece of bass I ever had in my life!"

So now I live in Florida retired and ponder when will I know when it will be time to go?

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