The Old Coot is a nail biter?
Published, May 4, 2011
I’m not really. A nail biter, that is. Not intentionally anyhow. Except when I snag one and need to trim it on the go. It usually happens because I forgot to cut them in a timely fashion. It seems as though I have to do it every few days, but that’s the “old coot” thing at work. The older you get, the faster time goes by. Every reference you make to time is off by a factor of two or three. I’ll say, “Two years ago we rescued the cat.” Then I’ll be corrected, “No, that was in 2005, six years ago!” It’s the same thing with trimming nails and cutting hair. I look in the mirror and think, “I need a hair cut. How can that be? I just got one last week.” Then I check the calendar and discover it’s been four weeks.
Same with my nails. I start snagging them, putting on a coat or doing some similar strenuous activity, and stare down in puzzlement, “Didn’t I just cut them the other day?” (This is only true for men. Our nails get in the way the minute they extend beyond the tips of our fingers. Women’s nail growth tolerance is many, many millimeters beyond that). So, when we snag one, we bite off the split end so it won’t catch on anything else and make a mental note to get out the trimmers when we get home. It usually takes three days for us to remember. Often after another snag or two.
People used to think that fingernails (and hair) kept growing after death. Even faster than when you are alive. A lot of old horror films made the case, showing zombies with flowing hair and long nails. It’s not true, but that doesn’t stop my generation from believing it, and it crosses our minds when we think our nails are growing faster than they used to. “Am I dead? Or close to it? Is that why they’re growing so fast?”
So, we go through life biting more nails than we trim. We’re like the cavemen, who without question were nail biters. What else could they have been? They didn’t have nail clippers. They didn’t have knives or scissors. They bit their nails and the trait was imprinted in their DNA. The bad habit went on for hundreds of thousands of years and came down to us. Even our more recent ancestors were nail biters. Chapel Carter didn’t invent the nail clipper until 1896. So, the next time you see an old coot biting a nail, be nice. He’s not doing it because he’s uncouth. It’s in his genes. Besides, he’ll swear he just cut them yesterday.
The Old Coot fixes the education system.
Published, May 11, 2011
Politicians complain about the school system all the time: “We need to raise the math scores; we need higher science scores. We have to compete with the rest of the world!” It’s all bogus. Our education system is fine. Or would be. If we just kept the politicians out of it. You don’t create Edison’s and Einstein’s by Albany and Washington setting standards in schools. They create themselves; it has nothing to do with the school system.
But, here we go again. The State Education Department recently issued “draft” guidelines for evaluating teachers and principals in response to a new law from the legislation. The guidelines use the results of the standardized English and Math tests that the kids take every year. If the class scores poorly on the tests, the teacher gets the axe. I wish we had this system when I went to school; my gang would have used it to get rid of the “mean” teachers. We would have failed on purpose. Especially, since the results don’t count toward a student’s grade. As it was, we didn’t take standardized tests very seriously. They were called the Iowa Tests back then. A “fill-in-the-circle” answer sheet was used so that a computer-like device could scan the sheets and grade the results. We pretended to read a question and then filled in a circle. But, we weren’t taking the test. We were goofing off; we were daydreaming. We never read a single question. We made designs and patterns on the answer sheets with a #2 pencil, the mandated writing implement of the day. One year, I got the highest math score in my class doing this. So much for the reliability of the new teacher evaluation system mandated by Albany.
Test scores aren’t the way to evaluate teachers. It makes them spend the academic year focused on the tests, sacrificing a well-rounded education. Ex-students are the best source of information on teacher performance. It’s the only way you can really find out who is doing a good job. And, who needs to be sent on a long recess. Go to a class reunion, or any gathering of former students, and you will discover the truth about the teachers. And, it’s usually the “mean” ones, the ones the pupils wanted to get fired when they were in their class, that come out on top. The school principal can evaluate the teachers by surveying a group of former students. And, we can still use the standardized tests. Put them to even better use; make the politicians take them; see how they like it. If they fall into the lower percentile, they lose their job. It would improve our education system immensely.
The Old Coot is helpless!
Published, May 18, 2011
I can’t open anything! It really hit me the other day as I tried to get into a box of Cheerios. I’m helpless! I unflapped the cardboard top. No problem. Then came the plasticized wax paper bag, heat-sealed at the top and bottom. If you grip it on opposite sides you are supposed to be able to pop it open with a quick tug, hoping not to spill the contents all over the table. My grip wasn’t up to the task. I had to get up and get the scissors to free those little round toasted oats. Then, I dumped them into a bowl and reached for the milk. It was in one of those waxed, cardboard-ish containers, the kind that’s folded and sealed at the top and has an arrow pointing to where you should open it. I wasn’t paying attention and opened it on the wrong end, forming a jagged spout. The milk came out in all directions. But, I was able to get some of it into the bowl. It wouldn’t have made a difference if I’d opened it correctly anyway. Half the time the designated end has too much stickum on it and comes out just as jagged as when you open the wrong end. It’s why I try to buy milk in plastic bottles; the heck with global warming.
But, it’s not just cereal boxes and milk cartons that give me trouble; it’s everything that comes in a package: potato chips, pickles, peanut butter, toys, condiment packets, little creamers, on and on and on. CDs and DVDs are the hardest to open, worse than childproof medicine bottles. Back in the 1970’s, when overzealous bureaucrats in Washington foisted these atrocious things on us, old coots were capable of opening an aspirin bottle, even with arthritic tinged fingers. They could gobble down a few pills and keep their lumbago at bay. But not after it was decided that parents weren’t capable of keeping medicine away from their kids and the childproof bottles hit the marketplace.
Then, to make matters worse, along came the Tylenol incident in 1982, where seven people died after ingesting cyanide laced Tylenol capsules. Tamperproof packaging became the standard for a whole slew of products, and now I sit with a bag of Snickers in front of me trying to appease a sweet tooth attack and I can’t find the scissors. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich would get me over the hump, but the peanut butter jar hasn’t been opened yet. I know I can unscrew the top. I also know I won’t be able to pull off the disc that’s glued to the rim; the tab is too small for me to grip. I’m out of luck, a “package challenged” old coot. It’s just a matter of time before I’ll have to hire a professional opener to come by every few days, to untwist, unseal, uncap or otherwise open things for me. Either that, or I’ll be pushing a shopping cart full of unopened food products around town with a sign on my back that says, “Worked for food – now, help me open it!”
The Old Coot can’t handle it.
Published, May 25, 2011
Shipping & Handling! I know what shipping means; I was never sure about the handling part. It used to be an innocuous word, but I’ve been stung by it of late, so I looked it up in the dictionary. I discovered it’s Latin for, “Boy are we going to sock it to you!” You discover how true this is when you buy a product advertised on TV. That’s when “handling” gets out of hand. It’s interesting that most products sold on TV infomercials are priced at $19.95 (plus shipping and handling). In most cases, the advertiser will throw in a second item at no additional charge, “You just have to pay for shipping and handling on it,” says the announcer, “What a deal, ha, ha, ha. “ The ha, ha, ha is implied, not spoken. When you get the invoice, you discover you’ve been charged $ 19.95 for the item (no charge for the second one, as promised) plus $23.95 for shipping and handling. Yikes!
Just think how bad life would get if our local merchants implemented a handling fee similar to the one imposed on us by the swamp oil salesmen on TV. You’d go to a deli and order some cold meat. The clerk would slice some turkey, ham and bologna, bag it and ring up your bill: $8.53 for the meat, $9.25 for handling. Everything you buy is handled so the price of things would really skyrocket. My gosh, what would a haircut or a massage cost if a handling charge was added to the bill? They involve nothing but handling.
A close relative of the handling fee is the restocking fee. It also is a Latin word. It translates roughly into English as, “Now we’ve really got you!” You never get charged this when you go to a local business to return an item. This is a charge used by big box stores and companies that sell you crap on TV or over the Internet. If you think a handling fee stings, then a restocking fee will send you screaming to a pain clinic. Returning a $100 item that didn’t live up to the retailer’s description can result in a restocking fee of $30, $40, or $50.
