Old Coot articles published in December, 2011

The Old Coot knows why.

Published December 7, 2011

You see it on TV all the time – another promise to make you thin – “Buy my tape” – “Join my gym” – “Follow my diet” – “Take a walk!” None of it works. Not for long anyway. But, I’ve discovered the secret. We just have to do the stuff we don’t do anymore. 

Like, get up and walk over to the TV to change the channel. Lean way to the right in your car and use a hand crank to open the passenger window. “Push” the lawnmower; use a hand-powered trimmer. “Sweep” the clippings off the sidewalk with a broom. “Shovel” the snow.

The list of “stuff we don’t do” is a long one. I spent twenty minutes looking for the car keys so I could drive to the post office and get a stamp to mail a bill to a business five blocks away. I could have walked over and paid it in person, but we don’t do that anymore. Now, I do even less; I sit at a computer and pay the bill. I’ve become so sedate, I no longer turn pages in a book. I push a button on a Kindle. Presto! I’m on the next page. I don’t even expend energy to turn down the corner of a page so I can go back to it. My Kindle has a button for that too. 

We don’t take the stairs – up or down – even if we only want to go to the next floor; we push a button and wait for the elevator.  (And catch a cold from another passenger in the process). We push a lot of buttons – the one on the dishwasher. (No more scrubbing the plates and wiping them dry). The one on the dryer – no more strenuous trips to the backyard to hang out the clothes. More of the stuff we don’t do anymore.

It’s everywhere – this stuff we don’t do. It’s in our car. We don’t push in a clutch, shift gears or crank the wheel with our own muscle power. We don’t row a boat – climb a hill to ski or sled down. We don’t clean the oven – pull the stuff out of the freezer to defrost it. We don’t pick berries, can tomatoes. We nibble; we nosh; we sit and push buttons. And wonder why we’re an obese society? What’s the big mystery?

    

The Old Coot mumbles right along.

Published December 14, 2011

It happens every time. You walk in nervous, slink into a reclining zero-gravity chair that makes you feel like you’ll slide out head first and point to a tooth that was killing you last night, but seems fine at the moment. You wonder if you should try to escape the noose you’ve slipped your neck into when the dentist sticks a sharp pointy thing into the bad spot and asks, “Does this hurt?” You scrape yourself off the ceiling, wipe away your tears and weakly nod, “Yes.” The dentist gets you ready: shoots in Novocain with a 12 inch needle, packs in a cotton wad the size of New Jersey, forces a torturous, metal contraption around the troublesome tooth and says, “So what’s new with you?”

You mumble an incoherent, two-word, “Na mush.” Even if you just won the Nobel Peace Prize, you can’t say it. Doctor Driller skips right over your muttered reply and peppers you with questions, none of which can be answered with a wink or a nod -  “How did you make out with the transmission problem on your Jeep?” – “What was the best thing about your trip to the Adirondacks?” You stare back hopelessly, a mute in a verbal world. You give up, close your eyes and hope for the cold hand of death to tap you on the shoulder.  

They teach students in dental school to make it so a patient can’t talk and then ask questions. It’s an important technique. It distracts from the picking, prodding and drilling. It’s the hardest course in the curriculum. Students must learn to ask questions that can’t be answered with a nod or a grunt. Don’t ask, “Are you ready for Christmas?” the instructor lectures the class. Ask instead, “What are you doing to get ready for Christmas?” Don’t ask, “Did you have a good summer?” Ask, “What did you do this summer?” It’s not as easy as you think. Students practice the technique on teenage boys who are masters at giving one-word, or one-grunt answers. “How was school today?” an exuberant mom will ask her teenage son as he comes in the door. All she gets in response is a mumbled, “Kay.” She tries again, “What would you like for dinner?” He grunts and shrugs his shoulder. Dental students don’t get their degree until they can evoke a full sentence from a teenager. The dropout rate is high.

This technique works on normal patients. They try to answer the dentist’s questions, get frustrated and give in. But, not old coots. We are undaunted by a numbed mouth and a wad of cotton. Mumbling incoherent syllables is right up our alley. The dentist becomes the victim when an old coot is in the chair. It speeds up the process; we’re out of the chair in record time. But, not out of the office. The poor receptionist gets an earful. First, about the good old days. And then, about the high cost of the dental work. She’s at a disadvantage. She doesn’t have a wad of cotton to shove in our mouth.

The Old Coot won’t shake on it.

Published December 21, 2011

There are a lot of handshake bullies out there. You get introduced to one, stick out your hand and find your fingers clasped in a vice. The palm of your hand never made it into the shake. The bully looks at you with one of those “gotcha” grins and squeezes. You hear your knuckles crack, feel the joints buckle and fight with everything you’ve got to hold back the tears and stop yourself from screaming.

You need a “do-over” according to my friend Wayne Moulton, who is a long time student of criminal behavior. He’s right. You desperately want to do it over when a handshake bully catches you off guard. But there aren’t any “do-overs” with these guys. Not like when you were a kid and you could reverse a mistake by yelling, “Do over; I call it!” It applied to anything: that wild swing of the bat that earned you a third strike, the foul shot that lipped out in a game of Horse, that lame attempt at a back dive that you chickened out of at the last second. In the adult world, the golf adult world that is, they call a “do-over” a Mulligan. Blast a tee shot into the woods and you get a Mulligan. Usually, only one per round, but the guys I play with let you take one every hole.

But, not handshake bullies. When they’re done crushing your hand you don’t have enough strength to go through it again. Your hand needs a day to recover. So you grin and bear it and put a picture of the bully in a special place in your memory so you’ll be ready the next time. It won’t work; he puts a picture of you in his memory. If you stick out your hand, ready for his maneuver, he doesn’t make a quick grab for your fingers, he ducks down and gives you a “friendly” punch in the gut, “Ha ha, gotcha again.” The only thing to do then, is to stomp down on his foot with everything you’ve got, and say, “Oops, sorry. I tripped.”

This is why a lot of people don’t shake hands anymore. They hug, do a fist bump, a shoulder bump or a high five. Anything, to avoid getting trapped by a handshake bully. Old coots don’t do any of that stuff; it’s too complicated and we’re too uncoordinated – we miss the other guy’s fist in a fist bump and end up punching him in the upper arm – an attempt at a shoulder bump finds us staggering past the guy, headed for a spill to the ground – a high five ends the same way and we don’t hug. We step back, tip our hats and say, “Howdy; nice to meetcha.” It makes us look like idiots but who cares? Handshake bullies never get us.