May 2012 published articles

 

The Old Coot ain’t a master craftsman!

Published May 2, 2012

This Old House is one of the most popular shows on Public Television. A crew takes on an old house and refurbishes it. Problems mount as the house is torn apart but the capable craftsmen are up to the challenge. Little by little, week by week, the project progresses. Eventually, the homeowner gets back into his new “old” house and life goes on. The remodeling crew moves on to a new “old” house.

“It’s a fantasy! It might as well have been created at Disney using animated cartoon characters,” said Rick Elliker at one of our solve-the-world’s-problems sessions at the Goat Boy Coffee bar. “In the real world, the show would be called This Darn House.” (Though Rick’s actual title is slightly more colorful than that). He’s right. I’d like to see Norm Abrams tackle one of my projects some time. Using my tools, not the ultra sophisticated, million dollar shop tools he uses. Let’s see how nice and tight his miter joints are using a plastic miter box that’s held together with duct tape. Or, pound a nail with a hammer that has a rounded head that bends nails if your aim isn’t perfect. How about leveling things up with a level that’s off a quarter of a bubble, and you can never remember which way it’s off.

Matt (another fan of the show) says he’d gladly loan Norm his skill saw. The blade has been in it for ten years, except the time he took it out and put it in backwards so he could cut concrete. I’d like to loan Norm my battery-operated drill and see how well he does with a tool that needs recharging after putting in five screws. 

They never show the real world on these do-it-yourself shows. Like, when you get up on the ladder in the attic and realize your tape measure isn’t hooked to your belt. It’s down in the basement in a window well (when you finally locate it an hour later). Or, the six trips to the hardware store; three for thingamajigs and doohickeys and other stuff you don’t know the name of and three for advice, the last trip to have the advice repeated. No, they never show the plumber removing the faucet because he put it in backwards. Or, the carpenter running down to the basement to trip the breaker back on because he pounded a nail into a wire in the wall. 

The guy on the roof never gets stranded because he kicks the ladder over when he hops off the top rung. A ladder that’s never quite long enough for the job at hand. There are no smashed thumbs, no cursing, no hammers thrown across the room. Everyone on This Old House is happy and carefree. Not at all like those of us with starring roles on “This Darn House.” 

The Old Coot has a flash back!

Published May 9, 2012

I was with my grandson the other day. He had jelly and powder from a donut all over his face. I grabbed a napkin and started cleaning him up as he twisted and squirmed, in a vain attempt to avoid the process. I eventually got him cleaned up, sort of. I’m not fanatical about it. He’s lucky. He doesn’t get the spit shine we did when we were kids. From “old ladies” armed with handkerchiefs and endless supplies of saliva.

I can still feel the dread that swept over me when my mother (grandmother or aunt) dug into her coat pocket for a wadded up old handkerchief to clean me up when were out in public. Usually, it was a milk or hot chocolate mustache that needed a spit shine. Out came the hanky – into her mouth to gather the cleaning solution and then, the treatment process began. It was like having a criminal come up from behind you and slap a chloroform rag over your face. Except, in this case, it wasn’t chloroform you smelled, but a blend of weak perfume and the scent of stale lifesavers that had nestled next to the handkerchief in her coat pocket.

The technique was akin to water boarding. You thought you were going to die, as she scrubbed every crevice in your face while holding you motionless in a straightjacket-like wrestling hold. Talk about squirming. I usually ended up on my back, pinned under a black, low-heeled shoe by the time the sterilization process was completed.

Kids today have no idea the torture they’ve missed since handy wipes were invented. They also lucked out because clean faces aren’t thought to be as close to godliness as they once were. The standards are lower. Mothers (this never was a father thing) went around armed with concealed weapons: handkerchiefs stuffed in their coat or apron pockets, up a sleeve or someplace below their clavicles next to a wad of cash. Get a crumb on the edge of your mouth and out came the weaponry. My mother was faster on the draw than a gunslinger in the old west. Even today, I’m afraid of a handkerchief. When I see one peeking out of a woman’s coat pocket or sleeve, I pull into a crouch and start to whine; I feel like I’m four years old and sporting a milk moustache. It’s a flash back. I’m not shell shocked; I’m spit shine shocked.

The Old Coot earns a teaching degree.

Published May 16, 2012

I went to the doctor the other day. My toes felt a little fuzzy, sort of half asleep. They’ve been like that for years but curiosity finally got the best of me. I wanted to know why? He checked things out and said, “No problem. I’ll make you a shoe insert to take the strain off the metatarsal bones; it will reduce the pressure and you’ll be fine. Why didn’t you come to me sooner?” I didn’t have an answer. I just said, “Because this is my first time being old. I didn’t know any better.”

We have classes for everything in this country, but none for what to expect and how to deal with the aging process. It’s not so critical when you first start down the path, say in your thirties. You try a running flip in the back yard to show your kids how cool you were when you were their age. You limp around for a few days and start a list of things you can’t do anymore. The list grows exponentially with every decade. It eventually dwarfs the list of things you can do. Touch your toes? No! Shinny up a rope? No! Read the paper without glasses? No! You adjust, little by little. But, it would be a lot easier if there were a course you could take to prepare you for the next phase. 

If you get a bunch of speeding tickets the judge makes you attend a defensive driving course. So you won’t hurt yourself or others on the road. That’s what I need, a defensive aging course. Loaded with tips so I don’t hurt myself. Things like, “Stop putting on your socks while standing up!” Hopping on your left foot while putting a sock on the right foot is a sure way to introduce your head to the bedpost. It hurts. I know. I have a long list of do’s and don’ts; of things I learned the hard way traveling down the old age highway. My publisher says not to bother. Nobody will read it, that people are just like I was when I was in my thirties. They’ll take one look at the title and say, “Not for me! I’m not going to get old!”

Maybe she’s right. But, I feel compelled to get the information to the public, to teach people the proper way to get into a car (back in so you don’t get trapped in a split with one foot stuck under the gas peddle and the other on the driveway). Or, how to drive when the crick in your neck is so bad you can’t turn your head to see if someone is coming when you turn a corner (carry a small mirror so you can see to the right and left). I’d have a whole chapter on cats. How they sit in the dark and wait for you to stumble over them in the middle of the night. I was complaining all over town about the lack of defensive aging training. Finally, one of the 40-something guys who I have coffee with had enough of my bellyaching. “There is a course on aging,” he said. “It’s at the Goat Boy Coffeebar, at 8am. I’m surprised you didn’t realize it. You’re the tenured professor!

The Old Coot is afraid of the big bullies coming to town.

Published May 23, 2012

Bully, Bully, Bully! That’s all you hear these days. Like it’s some new phenomena. Oh sure, some extreme cases started the news coverage, but the media hype has blown the problem all out of proportion. Maybe even contributed to it. Do we really need to make over our entire social structure to cope with a human condition that’s been with us since before we came down from the trees and moved into caves?

I remember the bullies at my grade school. I met the first one, Butchy, the day I started kindergarten. He pushed me aside at the sand box and said, "This is mine!” I hustled over to the cabinet and pulled out a fire truck. He took that too. He was twice my size, and carried a bat on the playground. He wasn’t as tough as Denzel, who lined us up on the playground every Friday and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, “Give me a dime or take a slug in the arm!” I was cheap. I took the slug.

My father told me to stand up to him. Like all father’s who don’t know what they’re talking about. “A bully will back right down if you confront him,” was the wisdom of the day. It was nuts! I watched kids do that. Denzel made quick work of them. But we learned a lot from the bullies. Most important of all: not to be one. We knew how it felt. Nobody in my crowd of chickens picked on the little kids. But, by today’s standards we’d be in big trouble at school; we’d be enrolled in the bully reform program.

Us bullies shot spitballs across the room. We stuck “Kick Me” signs on classmate’s backs. We carried concealed weapons, and used them. Squirt guns! Pigtails got dipped in inkwells. We had a wind up gadget that gave what felt like an electric shock when you shook hands with an unsuspecting victim. We had fake packs of gum that snapped a kid’s finger like a mousetrap when he tried to pull out a stick. We were bad! We were bullies according to today’s new rules.

And, that’s the problem. We’ve turned the bully problem over to the real bullies, the politicians in Albany and Washington and the bureaucrats in the state and federal education departments. Now that it’s in their hands, we can expect to be shoved around more than ever. It’s “Butchy” grabbing the sandbox and the fire truck all over again! And, kids today are being deprived of a critical experience in growing up, how to survive and get along with people they can’t control. We were lucky; we learned to find our way in a world of bullies. And, we learned not to abuse our power when we became the “big” kid. We’re bully smart, but not smart enough to deal with the new bullies in town. 

The Old Coot lost his native tongue.

Published May 30, 2012

Language changes! Not much of a revelation there, but it happens so slowly we sometimes don’t notice. By the time you’re an old coot, you need to attend English as a Second Language class. I sent someone an e-mail the other day. It was all capital letters. It’s not my usual style but I’d jotted it off without looking at the screen. I was using my two-finger typing method and my eyes were focused on the keyboard. I guess I’d slipped and hit the Caps Lock key. It was too hard to fix, so I just sent it. A few days later, the guy I sent it to, asked me if I was still mad. “Mad? Why would I be mad? I’m not mad!”  - “Well, that message sounded like you were yelling at me. It was all Caps.”

I can see that now. But, I got stuck on his term; CAPS. It was another reminder of how the language has left me behind. I’d only started using the term CAPITAL LETTERS a few years ago and now it’s been replaced with CAPS. They were called UPPER CASE in the language I grew up with. Small letters were called lower case. Our school paper had three lines for each row (it probably still does). Upper Case letters spanned all three lines, from the bottom to the top. Lower case letters stayed within the lower two lines, except for the stick parts of some letters like b, l & d, which were allowed to protrude into the alpine atmosphere of the upper case letters. Other lower case letters, like p & j, were allowed to have their stick part slip below the bottom line. But, by and large, the bulk of the lower case letters were low and the upper case letters were high.

By the time my daughters started school the language changed from lower and upper case, to capital letters and small letters. By the time my son came along the language changed yet again. This time it was the term WRITING that got the axe. It was changed to SCRIPT. He learned to print and switched to script. We learned to print and switched to writing. He was allowed to hold his pen any way he wanted. (It looked to me like he was holding a knife and stabbing the paper). We spent two years learning the “correct” way to hold a writing instrument, in a vise-like grip between our thumb and index finger with the instrument resting on our middle finger. It was a pencil we learned on, not a pen like my son did. We didn’t get a pen until third grade, and it wasn’t a ballpoint pen or a fountain pen either. It was a wooden penholder with a pen point inserted into it. The ink came from the inkwell on our desk that was filled by the teacher. (Note: you may have to Google some of the terms I’m using. They are from the old language). 

I was one of the last kids in my third grade class to earn the ink privilege. It took hours and hours and pages and pages of loops and swirls and other writing exercises to learn the technique. I can still fill a page with spirals, even with my eyes closed. All that got thrown out when they changed the language. And, I missed it. They’re writing (scripting) me out of my native tongue.