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How do you know when or if you're ready to retire?

How much do you need to change your identity if you retire from you profession, your career, your job?

Changing our pictures of ourselves is difficult.

One of the first joke-y ads I remember from my childhood was the signature phrase "It's Time to Re-Tire" from the Fisk Tire Company.

Illustrated for magazines by the best commercial artists of the day, including Norman Rockwell, the ubiquitous ads appeared in every glossy magazine and on billboards. It depicted a sleepy little boy in pajamas, carrying a candle in one hand and effortlessly supporting a huge automobile tire over his other shoulder.

"Why's the kid lugging a tire around?" I asked my older brother when I was maybe four or five. I hated not getting the point. "It's a joke," he explained. "Some people say 'retire' to say 'go to sleep' and the company is making it funny by putting a real tire there. Get it?"

I didn't. But I pretended to, since one lesson I'd mastered since I learned to walk was to pretend I understood something even when I didn't. This strategy would buy me time to figure it out for real without being embarrassed.

The play of words on "retiring" to bed and "re-tiring" one's car made the catchphrase useful for the original manufacturer; they used it for decades.

And decades later, the memories have resurfaced and been retread.........

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