Journey of The White Bear #3: The Gold Watch Plan

To a Generation X kid from the 70's, nothing sums up a boring factory job like the intro to Laverne & Shirley.

Life Lesson:  The people around you have a life all planned out for you, and that life probably sucks.

I was a nine-year-old in the small Ohio town of Willard when I first heard of the Gold Watch Plan.  My best friend and I had been outside playing all morning, and we wandered into his kitchen for some Kool-Aid.  His mom, aunt, and grandma happened to be having tea at the kitchen table when we went in.  As we were drinking our Kool-Aid, his aunt told the other women that her husband just got his gold watch.  She pulled the watch out of her purse and showed them.

"What did he get the watch for?" my friend asked.  His aunt explained, "Your uncle worked at the factory for 40 years, and he just retired.  When you retire, the company gives you a big party, a gold watch, and a pension." 

"Wait," my friend asked, "he worked for the factory for 40 years... and all they gave him was a watch?"  The concept seemed ludicrous to our young ears.

"It's a gold watch," his aunt replied sternly.

"If you work for a company for 40 years, they should give you a... a... a Cadillac!" my friend exclaimed.
"And I bass boat!" I added.
"And a really great 12 gauge." He added.
"And..." I never got the sentence out.
His aunt was getting upset, and my friend's mom shooed us out of the kitchen.

We took our Kool-Aid to the picnic table on the patio, and he a serious discussion (for 9-year-olds) about the fact that we just realized our lives were all planned out for us.  We talked about all the things we pretended to be when we would play, like soldiers, spies, pirates, or mountain men.  But we never pretended to be factory workers.  It just seemed awful.  We discussed the fact that none of the adults we knew seemed to like their jobs.  My dad, a draftsman, liked his work, he liked figuring out mechanical problems and then drawing the parts he designed.  But he usually had a boss or coworker who made his job annoying.  So even he didn't really like his job much of the time.

So my friend and I, as 9-year-olds in a small town in Ohio, made a pact with each other that we would live lives of adventure.  We wouldn't work lame, boring jobs for our whole lives.

I soon moved a block away, and didn't see my friend quite as much.  Then we moved outside of town, and eventually to another state.  I don't know if he went on to live a life of adventure, or if our childhood pact was just something that faded away.  But I did take "the road less traveled" in life, and I've had a bunch of crazy adventures along the way.  I didn't end up flying a bush plane in Alaska or trekking through the Canadian wilderness hunting grizzly bears, but I didn't stare at beer bottles like Laverne and Shirley either.

We all get to decide whether to live the life those around us expect, or to live life as an adventure.  It's not a one-time decision.  It's a moment to moment decision.  To be clear, I'm not saying everyone should blow off their responsibilities and go backpack through Europe for a year.  But we can look for, and find, little adventures on a daily basis.  We can push our limits in our free time and our work, rather than letting the monotony beat us into submission.

As fate would have it, by the time my friend and I were in high school, those high paying, but mostly boring factory jobs were disappearing.  The peoplewho planned to work 40 years for the gold watch and the pension mostly got laid off and had to find new careers.

Here's a little secret, kids...  Life throws adventures at you no matter what.  The people who avoid adventures on a day to day basis are the people who struggle the most with the big adventures life throws at them.  It's your choice.  How are you going to live today?