Rant #2,829: Pay the Piper

Well, the poison is there, but the bottle has not been opened yet due to circumstances beyond my control.

My family and I did our taxes yesterday, and do you want the good news first or the bad news?

I will give you the good news first ...

Our son did very well on his taxes.

Now for the bad news …
 
My wife and my taxes still aren’t done yet, and they aren’t done yet because a major error was made on the tax material related to my freelance job.
 
What happened is that we were going over each tax form that we had with the accountant, and we found a major discrepancy in how much these forms said I was paid versus what I actually was paid for this work, and yes, I can prove what I was paid versus what they said I was paid, as I have all my invoices for the work that I did.
 
As you can suspect, they claimed they paid me more than they actually did, but as I said, I have the proof of exactly what I was paid for my work.
 
The accountant said I had to check with them about the discrepancy, so everything was put on hold until I did.
 
We left his office, and when we finally got home, I tried to contact my employer, but I only received voice mail.
 
I finally emailed them and told them whet the problem was and attached all the pertinent material—my invoices—to prove my point.
 
I called another number and then another number, and finally I got through to someone who told me that yes, there was a discrepancy, and yes, they were working on the problem.
 
In the middle of the afternoon, I was sent the 1099 form—“Non-Employee Compensation”—with the proper dollar amount, and once I received that in my email, I was able to make another appointment for today to finally get our taxes done.
 
So all that this did was prolong the agony, and I do believe that my wife and I are going to get hit—and hit hard—a day later than originally planned.
 
I am ready.
 
I have my bullet-proof vest on, my bank account is ready to be plundered, and I am prepared for the very worst.
 
And once again, I am the cause of all of this family fiscal panic, and once again it all has to do with my situation of being forced to retire early because I simply could not find a job, and the only job I could get was the freelance job in question, which I am actually very fortunate to have.
 
I was just so out of it yesterday afternoon based on all of this nonsense that I had to go through yesterday morning with the taxes that I did something that I never do, which was watch TV all afternoon.
 
Since I have been home for going on three years, I have tried to stay away from doing that, I have always tried to keep busy, and I have stayed away from eating between meals, and one way to do that is to watch a minimum of television during the weekday days.
 
But yesterday, I was just so out of it because of this discrepancy that ai did park myself in front of the TV, always checking to see if any work had come in for me, but since none did, I just sat in front of the television.

 
This past weekend, the Decades channel finally did their tribute to Dwayne Hickman, the actor who starred in the very popular and iconic TV series “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.”
 
Hickman passed away a few weeks ago, and I was anxiously awaiting their tribute to him, which finally came this past weekend.
 
“Dobie Gillis,” which ran in the early 1960s, was such a different show for the time period, focusing on older teens who were the antithesis of the “Wally Cleaver” type of teen we were so used to seeing on TV sitcoms of the day.
 
The main characters on “Dobie Gillis” were basically losers, not the most handsome or pretty or the smartest tools in the shed, including “Maynard G. Krebs,” played by Bob Denver, the beatnik who was TV’s first counterculture character.
 
The show also introduced the likes of Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld to the world before they became big movie stars, as well as other actors who would later become icons of the small screen, like Yvonne Craig, the future “Batgirl,” and, of course, Denver, who used the Krebs character as something of a template for the nearly brain-deprived character he played on “Gilligan’s Island>”
 
Anyway, I recorded a few episodes during the Decades’ marathon for future viewing, which ended up being the day after the marathon ended.
 
One episode that I recorded dealt with Dobie’s father, who owns a small grocery store in town and decides he wants to move on to another job, a more executive-type job with a bigger supermarket concern where he thinks he has an in with one of the executives there.
 
He goes to the executive unannounced and basically lays his cards on the table right away.
 
“I’ve been in the food business for a long time,” he tells the executive, whose father he was friends with years earlier when the executive he was now talking with was a toddler.
 
“I know everything about food,” he continues. “I would be the perfect food executive for your company.”
 
He continues to go on and on with the young executive, who barely remembers Mr. Gillis,
 
Finally, the young executive says to him, “Look, I really cannot hire you … we can’t train an executive who is 57 years old.”
 
And that ends that.
 
Mr. Gillis dejectedly walks out of the young executive’s office, and he goes back to his small grocery, deciding right then and there that this is his fate, his purpose in life, and that he will never be able to go to the next level in his career.
 
And this episode came out in 1962 or so, 60 years ago.
 
So even back then, older workers were victims of what we now call “ageism,” something that I know all too well in my own career.
 
You reach a certain age, and if you are looking for a job, you are in major trouble, whether you were looking in 1962 or 2022.
 
And that leads me back to my wife and my taxes, which will hopefully get done today, now that everything appears to be in order.
 
I simply cannot win in any regard related to my taking early retirement when I did.
 
And yes, I was forced into it, because at age 62 and 63, I was considered to be too old to be hired.
 
Now at 64, I am at the cusp of Medicare, but not quite there yet.
 
Anyone who thinks that what I have been going through has been “easy” is just so wrong about it, and the repercussions of what I had to do are still being felt by myself and my family, and will continue for years to come.
 
But now, at least I know for sure that this is not a current phenomenon, that this ageism thing has been going on for generations.
 
How sad that is, because people like me are far from done, and still have a lot in the tank.
 
Well, it is business’s loss when they don’t hire older workers, and let me tell you, when they didn’t hire me, they lost the talents of someone special.
 
Now, finally, on to taxes!