Retirement.

“Surprise!” they said.

Wow, a retirement party. I didn’t have the nerve to say I hadn’t planned to retire today. I hadn’t even saved any money. No one really liked me at the office (secretly I thought they were about to fire me and give me my severance check), but this beautiful gesture more than made up for it.

Jim Tatalias

Jim Tatalias is a writer from the Washington, D.C. area who is a member of the comedy group Brick Penguin. His writing has been in the New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and is sometimes “bounced off” his young children before bedtime. They are not allowed proper books. More of his work is at jimtatalias.com.

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