"Dear Mr. Billinghay, we're writing to you to discuss your pension plan..."
They're words I wasn't expecting to hear at this stage of my life. I'm only 23, damn it, there are things I'm still waiting to do! Like growing a proper beard, buying my own car or convincing an animal to love me back. It's far too early for me to be thinking about pensions, far too soon for me to be considering a life after work when, in the bigger picture, work has only just begun. I've got another couple of decades to go until I can say I've been in a job longer than I've been a student, and even then I won't be ready; I'll be in the prime of my career, bullying interns into making me coffee and then not paying them for their troubles because that's how the world works, isn't it? You don't deserve a fair wage until you've proved you can do the job and live in the city without any wage at all! Kids these days; they don't know how good they've got it!
So what is this letter all about, current employer? Are you trying to scare me? Are you trying to trick me into thinking I'm actually really old so that when I look in the mirror and see my youthful face I'll believe I'm Sam Beckett, trapped in someone else's body on a mission to right a wrong that occurred in their life? Are you some kind of skin care commercial? It's all a little concerning and I'd like for it to stop.
My dad tells me that a pension plan is a good thing, but that I'll never be able to use it because the retirement age will probably be "One bloody hundred by the time it's my turn," and that, "the bloody government should be ashamed!" He swears more in my writing than he does in real life, but then I also write him with a Yorkshire accent when he's only ever lived in Lincoln. It's called imagination, you cretins.
My gran, on the other hand, believes that my pension is the best thing that will ever happen to me. She buys me sausages from the farmers' market with hers and doesn't understand the jokes I make about them being the most meat I'd ever want in my mouth at one time.
I love my gran.
I'm not going to opt out of my pension plan, partly because I enjoy receiving mail and partly because the last time I tried to opt out of anything several men with white hoods came round to my house and burnt a cross on my front lawn. It was then that I realised Kellegg's Special K wasn't as innocent as the branding made out.
I will not be making that mistake again.
