Retirement Projects
Charles Hibbard
Copyright 2013 Charles B. Hibbard
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Chapter 1
Victor Carogna is the only man in my knitting group. Or I suppose I should say the only other man in my knitting group. Leilah always tried to tell me that it's not a girl thing, that lots of guys knit, too, and I suppose they do; but I still think knitting isn't a girl thing the way professional football isn't a guy thing. Sure, there are some women who like football, or profess to like it, who may get some enjoyment out of ogling all those visible jockstrap lines when the behemoths line up to bash each other. But whose butts are planted on the couch every Sunday, in overwhelming numbers? And who do you find in the yarn shops, fingering the Koigu with those fixed, alpha-wave looks in their eyes – the Oakland Raiders?
Nevertheless, there he is, Victor Carogna, the ex-cop, placidly knitting away every Saturday afternoon just as though he'd never tossed a drunk headfirst into a paddy wagon. You might think I'd be glad to have an ally in that group of females, but in fact I'd be happier if he wasn't there, since he turned out to be the architect or at least the facilitator of a lot of my post-retirement difficulties, some of which you’ll soon hear about should you decide to read on. Indeed, he's currently on the disabled list, and his future status in the group is doubtful. I don't feel that I need any masculine moral support in that situation, or any other, really. Not that Victor Carogna would ever have given me any – quite the contrary, in fact. I've always gotten along fine with women, anyway, or so I used to think.
That I'm in the group at all is an anomaly – later I'll explain how it happened. I'm not a good candidate for most activities that involve manual dexterity, and I'm about as likely to injure myself or some innocent bystander with a pair of knitting needles as I am to produce anything resembling a garment with them. I learned, in a couple of months of diligent application and with the help of the knitting group, to produce a swath of more or less even stitches; but something always goes wrong, usually before I even reach the end of a row, but certainly before the end of a scarf, let alone a sleeve or a neckline, and I end up having to tear it all out and start over. I've been laboring over the same scarf for months now. (Philosophical question: Is it still the same scarf if it's been torn out and started over eight times?) This gives me a sense of comradeship with at least one other member of the group, kindly old Betty, who, although once a great knitter, has a touch of Alzheimer's and has been working on the same white afghan for years. She spends most of her time looking back and forth from the pattern to the yarn with a furrowed brow and shaking her flying white curls, trying to figure out where she is. I can relate. For Betty the problem is matching up the stitches she's actually completed with her place on the pattern. For me it's simpler – I can't really understand the damn instructions. For example: Rnd.1 [Ki, ssk, k6 (8,10), ssk, k1] six times – 60 (72, 84) sts. 2-4 Knit. 5 [K1, ssk, k4 (6,8), ssk, k1] six times, etc. etc. etc. It gives me a headache just to reproduce it on paper, let alone make needles and yarn comply with it. But that's OK, because for me, as for Betty, the knitting group is mainly a social thing, contracted in desperation when I unexpectedly found myself alone, a couple of months after I'd supposedly begun my golden years by retiring from high school teaching.