The word isn't jealous. I'm not jealous of Judy for being able to retire in a week or so. The word is envy. I'm envious as can be. She has a great pension from her first husband (deceased) and her second husband made lots of money and is retired himself, and she's all set financially. She doesn't have to do anyone's bidding anymore.

On the other hand, maybe she will be bored without a job. Maybe her life will suddenly seem too unstructured. Maybe it will be a difficult transition.

Judy was the one person who was most helpful to me when I first started on the job in 96. It's a vulnerable time, starting a new job. People see you as the new kid on the block, and many people want to prove their superiority to you. I walked into a job where most of the employees were women, and the boss is a cheap bastard and makes the utmost use of sexual discrimination in salaries, paying the women as little as he can get away with because he's a selfish miser, and then resenting having to pay a guy any more than he pays the women.

I took a big paycut to work there, because there was so little for me to do on my old job and the place was shrinking fast, down to just three of us. And also to save two hours of commuting time per day. But it hurt, financially, to take such a big paycut. The boss said I could make all that money back in overtime, but later he reneged on that promise and stopped paying for overtime.

Meanwhile, believe it or not, even after my paycut I was making more than all the women who were doing my same job, even though for the most part they were better at it than I was, in my opinion. These women were severely underpaid. At least most of them had husbands making more than they did, so their family finances were in fantastic shape, two oxen pulling in unison, making tons and tons of money together. I'm envious of that too.

But when I arrived, the bitch of an office manager spread the word that I was making more money than all of them, and the gals formed a conspiracy to give me no help at all. What a viper's nest I was walking into. The person I was replacing refused to show me how things were done, and got snotty. One or two or three of the other women made things as difficult and hostile as they could. Anyway I'm a survivor and I could make it without their freaking help.

But Judy, good ole Judy, was there for me all the way. She wanted no part of treating the new guy like shit. And now she's retiring. I'll miss her. She brings me the sports pages of her newspaper every morning. She's a sweetie pie. She actually made me feel smart, from day one, asking my advice about things, making me feel like I was something good.