Aimsterville

Given my perpetual lack of savings and my current state of unemployment, I’m assuming that “retirement” is some state of Nirvana that I will never reach. So I’m always a bit surprised when people who say they’re going to retire don’t do it, or come back out of retirement to start working all over again. And by “people,” I mean celebrities, athletes, and other people in the public eye. Of course, regular people come out of retirement or forego retirement altogether all the time–it’s called “I’m broke, and I have to go work as a Wal-Mart greeter because I’m going to outlive my savings.” Celebs and athletes don’t have this “I’m broke” problem, and yet some of them can’t seem to go away even after they said they would.

Unless you’ve been living under some sort of anti-pop culture rock lately, you’ve naturally heard about the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien debacle going on over at NBC, so I won’t rehash that here. And, frankly, to me it really doesn’t matter who caused whose ratings to tank and who forced who out and whether it happened in 2004 or 2010. The way I see it, the larger point is this:

Whether he liked the deal or not, Jay Leno agreed in 2004 to retire in 2009. And he said publicly that he didn’t want to be doing the Tonight Show into his sixties. But then he went all backsies on the whole thing, screwing over a lot of people in the process.

So why is it so difficult for people to say that they’re going to retire and then just go ahead and freaking retire already? I’m intrigued by the fact that this seems to be a predominantly male phenomenon–off the top of my head, the only women I can think of who came out of retirement are Cher (repeatedly) and Belgian tennis players Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin (and if I’m missing somebody, feel free to let me know in the comments). But men, particularly in sports and entertainment, seem to have a really hard time just going away and staying away. Jay-Z keeps announcing his retirement, but then he has to keep coming back to save rap (which, admittedly, needs to be saved). Garth Brooks is coming out of retirement to do a Vegas show, because apparently somebody thinks that’s a good idea. Lance Armstrong isn’t satisfied with seven Tour de France titles and so he’s back out of retirement to rack up some more. Florida football coach Urban Meyer set the land-speed record for retirement backsies by changing his resignation* due to health concerns to a “leave of absence” (which, as of this writing, still hasn’t started) in less than twenty-four hours. And, of course, the king of retirement backsies is Brett Favre, who will probably end up playing for every team in the NFL at some point in pursuit of his second Super Bowl ring. Seriously, when your name has become an Urban Dictionary definition, it’s probably time to hang it up.

Now, I’ve never been in the limelight and had millions of adoring fans, so I don’t know what that’s like–I would imagine that the rush would be fairly addictive and hard to give up. And I’ve never had a job that I loved so much that I would feel empty if I weren’t doing it anymore. So I can’t really presume to understand the psyches of the people I’ve mentioned above. But I can’t help but wonder why it’s so hard for these people to do what they love as a hobby (and not as a high-paying job) and channel their need for the limelight elsewhere–they can still throw the pigskin around in the backyard, they can still write songs, they can do stand-up. And they can make commercials and public appearances and participate in philanthropic ventures (and, in fairness, every person I’ve mentioned has done much good for a variety of causes). I don’t understand the need to stay in a position after you’ve announced that you’re going to leave when you 1) could still do some version of the same thing as a hobby, 2) don’t need the money and could still make buttloads of it trading on your celebrity anyway, and 3) have the money and leisure to retire at a much earlier age than most mere mortals, thus allowing you to engage in time honored retirement traditions such as spending more time with your family and cultivating other interests–not to mention the fact that your un-retirement could be screwing someone else deserving out of the opportunity to live the dream that you’ve gotten to live.

So I hope these people realize how lucky they are. They get to un-retire into the same jobs and the same obnoxious inflated salaries that they were always making. While out here in the real world, once the papers are signed and the gold watches are handed out, if people wake up one morning and decide that a future of mall-walking and shuffleboard isn’t for them–because people out here aren’t retiring at forty, or fifty, or even sixty–they don’t get to just go back to that same job. And they certainly don’t get to go back to that same salary, even though they probably need that salary now to supplement the 401K that tanked.

But hey, who wouldn’t want to spend their golden years handing out carts to shoppers, right? Maybe we mere mortals are the lucky ones–at least we appreciate what we haven’t got.

*I know, I know–that’s technically not a retirement and he could have decided to resume coaching for Florida or another team at any time. But I’m counting it 1) because it’s a super-duper extreme case of backsies and 2) he quit to address his health concerns and to get his priorities in order with his family and his faith, which to me are three things that are retirement-worthy projects and not something one can accomplish in a mere 6-7 months. Plus, I hate Florida football. So there.