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WITBONES – "Ask A Humorist!" is a new advice column for the laughlorn by humorist B. Elwin Sherman. This time out, he answers a question on Florida retirement.
DEAR WITBONES:
I´m fifty years old, and since my fondest desire right now is to live in Florida, where on Earth am I going to retire TO when I turn seventy?" Signed: WOMAN WONDERING IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dear WOMAN:
I´m devoting an entire WITBONES to your dilemma, because it sent me reeling into a frenzied research mode, tapping into my favorite and the most fun government agency ever misappropriated: the U.S. Department of Census -- a statistical stewpot of magnificent clutter.
Where else can you sit back and suffer through government gibberish like this:
" ... Intercensal estimates are different in their interpretation than postcensal estimates, primarily because population change is measured by the difference between two census enumerations, rather than through administrative data on the components of change ...."
Gulp.
Scary to think about the people who write like that. Scarier to think about the people who THINK like that. Scariest to think about the people who pay attention to it.
But, if we´re going to get you to Florida via our nation´s capital, we have to make a pit stop at the USDC. It is, after all, the zenith of our tax dollars at play, and it strikes at the heart of your poser. It is the best of what Voltaire called: "the art of government," which he defined as "Taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other."
To be fair, the blame for this doesn´t rest entirely with you. I´ve been watching Court TV all week, and my head is buzzing with legal-speak.
Yesterday, when a particularly pushy cross-examining lawyer zeroed-in on unraveling the opposition´s witness, (as the lawyer pursued what Henry James called: "the fatal futility of fact,") he was interrupted and admonished by the judge, who told him: "Well, Counselor, if the witness doesn´t remember what WAS in that document, chances are she doesn´t remember what WASN´T."
Then, your letter arrived, and I was forced to retreat to these frontlines and run amok in wicked sidebars, quoting dead French historians, American novelists, and TV lawyers.
But, we must address your quandary, i.e. where to go once you get where you´re going, so here are three fatal but fun futilities culled from my agonizing romp through the USDC´s factual databanks. Let´s look at these censal side dishes and draw your personal retiree profile and best-case scenario:
1. "In the year 2030, one in five Americans will be age 65 or older, or approximately 70 million people."
Thus, wherever you land in 2030, you´ll have 70 million peers, myself included, or an approximate 20 percent chance of your being rear-ended by another golf cart driver at the Pensacola Piggly Wiggly and a real albeit remote chance that it will be me.
I don´t know the odds of your being clipped by a myopic old humorist cutting through the parking lot on his electric golf trike, and even the USDC makes no reference to this.
You´ll recognize me, though. I´ll be the duffer lying in a post-catapulted bony heap in your backseat, wearing a day-glo crash helmet with: "WILL PUN FOR SEX" emblazoned in reverse-lettering on the visor.
2. "In 2030, at least 56.5 percent of men over the age of 85 will be married, versus only 15.3 percent of women at that age."
This one must mean that in 2030 the majority of married mid-octogenarian males will either be dead, or married to much younger women, or dead because they married much younger women, OR, they´ll be off three-wheeling in supermarket parking lots cruising and crashing into gero-babe buggy bumpers.
3. "The highest percentage of retirees will live in California and Florida. The lowest percentage in Alaska and Wyoming."
Statistically-speaking of the year 2030, it now appears you´re at least 25 percent assured of getting your question answered, OR, 75 percent likely to be wondering why you let your philandering Eskimoan husband talk you into buying that Cheyenne condo only to run off with a Sacramento widow, leaving you in a retiring, Sunshine State lurch with an aggravated case of golf cart whiplash and a pun-loving triker in the back seat.
Hmm. I would appreciate your refraining from putting questions like these to me in the future. I´ve now been up all night trying to find the demographics on migrating humorists.
And -- winter´s coming.
Copyright 2008 by B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Questions for WITBONES - "Ask A Humorist!" may be submitted to: WITBONES, c/o B. Elwin Sherman, P.O. Box 360, Bethlehem, NH, 03574. Or, you may e-mail Elwin via the WTIBONES website.
DEAR WITBONES:
I´m fifty years old, and since my fondest desire right now is to live in Florida, where on Earth am I going to retire TO when I turn seventy?" Signed: WOMAN WONDERING IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dear WOMAN:
I´m devoting an entire WITBONES to your dilemma, because it sent me reeling into a frenzied research mode, tapping into my favorite and the most fun government agency ever misappropriated: the U.S. Department of Census -- a statistical stewpot of magnificent clutter.
Where else can you sit back and suffer through government gibberish like this:
" ... Intercensal estimates are different in their interpretation than postcensal estimates, primarily because population change is measured by the difference between two census enumerations, rather than through administrative data on the components of change ...."
Gulp.
Scary to think about the people who write like that. Scarier to think about the people who THINK like that. Scariest to think about the people who pay attention to it.
But, if we´re going to get you to Florida via our nation´s capital, we have to make a pit stop at the USDC. It is, after all, the zenith of our tax dollars at play, and it strikes at the heart of your poser. It is the best of what Voltaire called: "the art of government," which he defined as "Taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other."
To be fair, the blame for this doesn´t rest entirely with you. I´ve been watching Court TV all week, and my head is buzzing with legal-speak.
Yesterday, when a particularly pushy cross-examining lawyer zeroed-in on unraveling the opposition´s witness, (as the lawyer pursued what Henry James called: "the fatal futility of fact,") he was interrupted and admonished by the judge, who told him: "Well, Counselor, if the witness doesn´t remember what WAS in that document, chances are she doesn´t remember what WASN´T."
Then, your letter arrived, and I was forced to retreat to these frontlines and run amok in wicked sidebars, quoting dead French historians, American novelists, and TV lawyers.
But, we must address your quandary, i.e. where to go once you get where you´re going, so here are three fatal but fun futilities culled from my agonizing romp through the USDC´s factual databanks. Let´s look at these censal side dishes and draw your personal retiree profile and best-case scenario:
1. "In the year 2030, one in five Americans will be age 65 or older, or approximately 70 million people."
Thus, wherever you land in 2030, you´ll have 70 million peers, myself included, or an approximate 20 percent chance of your being rear-ended by another golf cart driver at the Pensacola Piggly Wiggly and a real albeit remote chance that it will be me.
I don´t know the odds of your being clipped by a myopic old humorist cutting through the parking lot on his electric golf trike, and even the USDC makes no reference to this.
You´ll recognize me, though. I´ll be the duffer lying in a post-catapulted bony heap in your backseat, wearing a day-glo crash helmet with: "WILL PUN FOR SEX" emblazoned in reverse-lettering on the visor.
2. "In 2030, at least 56.5 percent of men over the age of 85 will be married, versus only 15.3 percent of women at that age."
This one must mean that in 2030 the majority of married mid-octogenarian males will either be dead, or married to much younger women, or dead because they married much younger women, OR, they´ll be off three-wheeling in supermarket parking lots cruising and crashing into gero-babe buggy bumpers.
3. "The highest percentage of retirees will live in California and Florida. The lowest percentage in Alaska and Wyoming."
Statistically-speaking of the year 2030, it now appears you´re at least 25 percent assured of getting your question answered, OR, 75 percent likely to be wondering why you let your philandering Eskimoan husband talk you into buying that Cheyenne condo only to run off with a Sacramento widow, leaving you in a retiring, Sunshine State lurch with an aggravated case of golf cart whiplash and a pun-loving triker in the back seat.
Hmm. I would appreciate your refraining from putting questions like these to me in the future. I´ve now been up all night trying to find the demographics on migrating humorists.
And -- winter´s coming.
Copyright 2008 by B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Questions for WITBONES - "Ask A Humorist!" may be submitted to: WITBONES, c/o B. Elwin Sherman, P.O. Box 360, Bethlehem, NH, 03574. Or, you may e-mail Elwin via the WTIBONES website.
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