Mid Life Crisis 2, Retirement, Bad Report Card, Spitting Image

As I approach my middle (sort of a countdown), I try to not think too much about stuffs; relax is what I mean. The problem is that I do think. Maybe it’s a hormonal or a psychological call it whatever name it may be called; but, lately (though I tried to not to) I notice that I am becoming more of a worrier than a thinker. Not that I am much of a thinker, anyway.

I know worrying is not healthy, and even to some Christians worrying is a sign of weakness, floundering  faith, and some even say it’s a form of lesser sin—missing the mark, I suppose. But thinking or worrying is one those things, bodily function or mental activity, that I (or anybody) could not just shut off. I mean, I for one would like to have the mental switch that I could manipulate to switch off thinking or worrying—I mean you cannot worry if you’re not thinking, vice versa.

Where's the damned switch?

Reaching forty, or the fear of it, I am now thinking of retirement. Job promotion is not my mind,  retirement is. I mean, I have only twenty years of teaching, most teachers take ten or more years plus graduate studies to get a pay grade hike, for me that is just too much. Not thinking of graduate studies, I stopped with 12 units in ED Management, who knows in the future. All I want is job security and when I retire a little lot in Quezon Province to plant camote. 

The nightmare!

Vision or delusion of wealth, achievements or grandeur has left me twenty years ago!  All I am looking forward to is a quiet retirement. That is one of the reasons why I am encouraging my daughter to study--a selfish reason, really. That is why I am trying, with my salary as a teacher 1, to provide for her a school that I think would suit her—a Christian School, not necessarily cheap and charitable or "Christian"--its really the perception that the school is good, that' all there is to it.

 I hope for her to be independent so that when it comes to my and her mother’s retirement, she is already well on her way off. My greatest fear is that, like most Filipinos, she would be a dependent i.e. living with us with her husband and children. For heavens sake...pleeeeaaaassseeee nnnnoooooo. I pray not. My Goooddd....nnnnooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....


 I am not looking to her to be our retirement insurance or thing like that. I know most parents think of their children as retirement plans, not me.  I just want her to be happily married and doing okay, not rich, just okay, maybe a teacher, an engineer or an embalmer...whatever makes her happy.

Where am I going?

I got my daughter’s report card, and I was really disappointed. I am not expecting her to have grades worthy  of a scholar, a genius, (not in our blood, anyway). (I came from a family of weirdos, but we are not really that smart.) No, I am not expecting such things. All I am expecting was progress, tiny, little, bitty, microscopic progress. (I SEEK PROGRESS AND NOT PERFECTION--shouting my motto as a teacher.)  I was her former teacher and I am her father, I know what she is capable of, but the progress I am expecting was not reflected in the report card.

Hmmm…worried. No matter how I tried to be philosophical and objective, I just cannot get over the disappointment.But, I am more of a pessimist than an optimist and as they say, pessimist are never disappointed.

I am thinking of shouting at my daughter. Preaching to her about hell and damnation in Gehenna or whatever place it is till my tonsils fall off--start from Genesis to Revelation plus the Apocrypha . Or, I could smash her head with books till her head bleeds.Or plead with her like Mary pleading for the life of Jesus...or stuffs like that. Heck, I could just make her stop schooling.

 Hmmm...think about these things till they dry off.

I have been trying to cool off for two days now. I am not at home, I am at the school writing this. I can’t stand looking at my daughter, not that I don't love her anymore,—not angry, really, just disappointed—come to think of it, I don’t know which is worse. I have been quiet for two days now...thinking, simmering, and letting the steam off.

But then, introspection sets in. I am seeing in my daughter myself: the same lackadaisical attitude towards school, contempt for authority and even irreverence and dislike for religion, religious people and religious nonsense . My God! She is me.

That is why I am worried.

I am already starting to feel better...

But I know she will come about. I know because I know there's a lot of me in her (and a lot of her mother in her)…rebellious, hard, but I know when to quit the foolish stuff and start taking the bull by the horn and crushing the balls by the scrotum...