Nine years in, let me confirm with great enthusiasm, retirement is great. No alarm clocks, no being on call, no schedules. It’s bliss. I planned hard and saved hard for my post-work years and the result is well worth the effort. The thought of returning to a job has never occurred to me. There was no career that could lure me away from leisurely awakening, two hours of coffee drinking, the New York Times crossword puzzle, and pickle ball. Until now.
I have just learned of a vocation for which, with all due modesty, I was born. And this job is…president of the United States. Ha ha. This is just a little journalistic humor. I don’t want to be president. I want, like two hundred ninety million other citizens, to complain about the president. Whomever he or she is. Some wise man once said any American who is proposed to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from doing so. Another wise man said anyone capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job. Unfortunately, the people who do want to be president do not listen to these particular two wise men. Or any others.
The women in my family tend to have, let’s just say, very strong personalities. The various husbands refer to us as boss cows. They say this with a great deal of charm so it is not as insulting as you might think. Or maybe it is. If it is in fact insulting, then our grandmother should be singularly offended because she is known as the chief boss cow. The way she ran a kitchen during a holiday meal prep makes a Marine drill sergeant look indifferent in comparison. I think in former lives we were all traffic cops, pointing fingers and gesturing to people, trying to herd them along and get them to do our bidding. So the job for which I am so beautifully suited is influencer. You didn’t know this was a job either, did you? I had never heard of it until last week but, brother, having been enlightened, I am all in. Influencers set themselves up in the vastness of the internet and try to—-guess what?—-influence other people. Because I had no idea this was even a thing, I Googled it. According to Wikipedia, influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field. In case you got disoriented in all the crazy-speak, the key word in that sentence is “purported.” To recap, the qualification to be an influencer is a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence. Because we are now living in an asylum being run by the inmates, I am hazarding a guess that the person who determines if a wannabe influencer has an “expert level” of knowledge is…why not?…the influencer themselves.
Since an influencer has to have an expert level of social influence (don’t you love it when they use the word to define the word?) and I don’t have even the faintest, vaguest, most minute level of social influence, and I really really want this job, I’m going to jump on the expert knowledge bandwagon. These are the areas in which I am declaring myself to possess an expert level of knowledge: American politics: see above. Universal politics: Let’s see…Putin is in and Angela Merkel is out? Even a non-expert can see this is exactly backwards. Fashion: no backwards baseball caps (the bill goes in front so it can shade your eyes, get it?), no hats in restaurants, and no pants drooping down until what pants are designed to cover is uncovered. Anyone found guilty of any of the above infractions will be harshly fined and possibly waterboarded. The fining part will have the added benefit of retiring the national debt, speaking of which another area I’m proclaiming I’m an expert in is finance. Don’t shell out more than you take in. Pretty simple.
If there are any other areas in which you would like guidance, you can make an appointment for a consultation. After I’ve had my coffee.
Marla Boone resides in Covington and writes for Miami Valley Today
