Subject: An Open Letter
Dear 25 year-old me:

Thank you for working your tail off to get where you are. (Your reward now is working just as hard for the next thirty-plus years. Have fun!...and don't forget to maximize all retirement contributions always.)

However, let me tell you a little about this morning.

At 6:53 am, I was in front of a satellite clinic in a blue-collar neighborhood, there for fasting labs to be drawn. The guy ahead of me waiting for the doors to be unlocked looked like me: high-mileage, worn blue jeans, work shirt, ball cap, walked like his joints hurt.

I heard him give his birthdate checking in: full Social Security retirement age.

The phlebotomist asked him how his day was. He said, Well, I have to go to work after this

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You will remember the outside (including rooftop) $2.15/hr jobs we had during the summers we turned 19 and 20? and how forty hours in the southern California sun made even our young indestructible selves more than ready to go back and sit in an air-conditioned classroom come Labor Day? even if competing with a bunch of other much-better-prepared premeds for that A in Organic Chemistry was part of the deal?

Well, I appreciate it. Because our contemporary at the lab here today was presumably due to start his shift at 7:30, and it sure didn't look like he was heading for anything indoors. With a 30 minute lunch break, he'll clock out at 4:00.

Today is another heat warning, with 4 pm predicted to be a hundred degrees. And the AQI has been above 100 as well since yesterday morning.

Anyhow: thank you. Keep at it.

Because forty years from now, there is just no way you could be outside doing manual labor until 4 pm yesterday, today, tomorrow.

-- sutton