Tuesday, June 25, 2013

June 19, 2013 Article


The old coot can’t have any fun.
By Merlin Lessler

“You never let me have any fun!” What kid didn’t say that to his mother while growing up? It’s not mothers saying no these days; it’s the government. All levels of government. They won’t let us have any fun!

I’m not sure when this so called nanny state started, but it sure has blossomed over the past few decades. I think we brought it on ourselves. Any time anyone had a problem, they went to an elected official for resolution: local, state and federal. Elected officials used to send us back to solve our own problems. Not anymore, they enact a law and the bureaucrats issue a new set of rules.

It’s OK for some things, like making it illegal to pass a stopped school bus, or to drive the wrong way down a four-lane highway. But, now we are subject to laws that cover every trivial social misfortune. And, the number of new “you can’t do that’s” are growing at an ever quickening pace. We’re overrun with rules, and we’ve lost our sense of humor in the process. 

It starts right out with our kids; they are as regulated as we are. When kids from my generation ran home and told their mother that Bobby called them fatso or string bean or four eyes or any of the 1,435 insults in circulation at the time, she didn’t call the kid’s mother, or the police, or the school principal. She sat them down and taught them a chant, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!” We believed it and repeated it whenever some “bully” called us a name. The school system wasn’t bogged down with identifying and preventing such “outlandish” behavior. (We played dodge ball too.)

When we called a random phone number and asked the person who answered the phone if their refrigerator was running, and when they said yes, replied, “Well, you better hang up and go catch it!” The police didn’t show up ten minutes later and tell our parents to make us cut it out or we’d be arrested and charged with harassment like they did when my son made his first crank call. Both parties got a kick out of it in my day, but not anymore. Not in our no fun society; it’s against the law.  

If you get busy and forget to have your car inspected and park it on the street overnight, guess what? You’ll find a ticket on the windshield under the wiper blade. And no, they won’t void it if you rush right out and get it inspected that day. Not anymore. Even if you were in the hospital for the past two weeks. This is serious business! 

Let your dog off the leash in an empty park so he can run free for a few minutes, like his great, great grandfather did – you get a ticket. Tell a co-worker she looks great today – you get sent to HR for a lecture on sexual harassment. Drink soda out of a container larger than 16 ounces in the Big Apple – you get a scolding from Mayor Bloomberg. Jokingly say that the fathers at Notre Dame are holy on Sunday but you can’t trust them on Thursday or Friday like the president of Ohio State did – you get a visit from the politically correct police and retire a few years earlier than you planned. We can’t laugh at others, and we can’t laugh at ourselves.
 
We’re left with one choice, us old coots living here in what once was the land of the free. Break the rules, and when you get caught, just say, “You never let me have any fun!”

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

June 12, 2013 Article


The Old Coot has an exit strategy.
By Merlin Lessler

 There is a lot of pressure on us old guys, to make some end of life decisions. “End of life decisions?” we respond, “I’m not planning on an end of life. It’s too soon!” You see, in our heads, we’re still seventeen, in spite of the evidence in our mirrors, in spite of our inability to hop off a curb without wincing.

So, when our doctor sits us down, after telling us the thing we came to see him about is just something we have to get used to, something to expect at our age, and starts an “end of life decisions” conversation, we get irked (to say it politely).  Our idea of end of life decisions is a lot different from what the medical community has in mind. We’re focused on how many Clydesdale horses will pull our funeral carriage. Whether there will be a 21 or 121 gun salute. What kind of jet planes will fly by in formation? Whether the baseball stadium will be big enough for a public viewing. Certainly not the decisions being forced on us by a well meaning, but presumptuous medical establishment, insurance companies and Medicare bureaucrats. All focused on the bottom line.   

So, we’re pestered into making choices. “So you won’t be sorry later,” they lament. “If you are brain dead do you want to be kept alive on life support?” Brain dead. I’ve been brain dead for years; it’s not so bad. I’ll stick with it. Next question? “If you stop breathing, do you want to be resuscitated?” Ok that’s probably a valid one. But, then it gets a little strange. “If you stub your toe? Get a bad haircut? Lose your car keys? Do you really want to go on living? Wouldn’t you like us to put you out of your misery?

At least that’s how I hear it. My response to the doctor is always the same. Forget about the standard protocols. Forget about the insurance company policies, the Medicare rules. Just fall back on the Hippocratic oath. Which, in old coot terms boils down to, “Do me no harm!”

I finally did give in and discuss end of life decisions with my doctor. When it’s a cold and snowy winter evening and I sneak out of the house or the nursing home and feebly limp down the sidewalk and stumble over onto a snow bank so that I’m lying on my back with a fantastic view of a starlit sky, “LEAVE ME ALONE!” I’ll doze off with a smile on my face and the cold night will do its job. A pleasant exit. The Eskimos figured it out a thousand years ago. Slip the old coot onto a pile of furs on an ice floe and let him drift off into the night. A kindness for a life well lived.

“All nice and good,” my doctor responded. “But, what we had in mind was more like you stumbling out to the curb on garbage night with just enough energy to climb into a 30 gallon leaf bag and reach up and pull the drawstrings before you collapse inside. He’s ready to fill out the death certificate; he just needs to select the cause: bad haircut, stubbed toe or one of the other terminal conditions on the list he got from Medicare.

 

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

June 5, 2013 Article


The Old Coot is up in smoke.
By Merlin Lessler

It’s worse than the squawk that screeches from your TV every time a thunderstorm rolls through town. I didn’t think it possible! But, then the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) launched their latest round of anti smoking ads, a $54 million campaign to get smokers to quit. Now, I pray for the Weather Service squawk. To blast out the anti-smoking ads.

Every day, day after day, we’re treated to the images of “Terrie” putting in her teeth, donning a wig, tying a scarf to cover the hole in her throat and listening to her lecture us on the evils of smoking, in a raspy, artificial voice. And then there’s the guy who cough so hard he throws up. It’s unwatchable, not to mention: in poor taste, gross and disgusting.

Lectures don’t make smokers quit. Even a bunch of horrific and tasteless TV spots have little effect. All the ads accomplish, is to make us scramble for our remotes. It’s especially hard on us old coots. We get hurt, tripping and falling, trying to get to the mute button. To shut up Terrie and her smoking friends.

It’s the same technique the teachers in my elementary school used when some kid (not me) drew a picture of a witch on the board and wrote teacher under it. We were forced to sit at attention with our hands folded on our desks until the guilty party confessed. We all got punished because one kid (not me) pulled a fast one. I’m not sitting at attention at my desk but it sure feels like it when I’m forced to see and hear the graphic images that the CDC thinks will get smokers to quit.

45 million people in this country smoke. 254 million don’t, yet 254 million of us get punished for something we didn’t do. Smokers never see the ads anyhow; they’re out on the back porch having a cigarette! Even the CDC knows they have only a minor effect. “We think (hope) it might get 50,000 people to quit (1/10th of one percent of the smokers), says Doctor Tim McAffee, Director of the CDC’s, Office on Smoking Health. 

So, here I am, back in Miss McCormick’s 5th grade class, sitting at attention at my desk, waiting for the dismissal bell to ring, all because some kid (not me) won’t confess to putting a frog in the right hand top door of her desk. Only now, instead of sitting at my desk, I’m in a chair without a remote, forced to watch Terrie get ready for her day. Toothless, voiceless, frail, bald and with a hole in her neck. It almost makes me want to have a cigarette!

Sunday, June 2, 2013

May 29, 2013 Article


The Old Coot explains why he’s a grump.
By Merlin Lessler

Old Coots have a chronic memory problem. “Oh sure,” people say, “We know all about it; you can’t remember names; you can’t remember what you went into the living room to get, stuff like that.” That’s all true, and a frustration for sure. But, that’s not the memory problem I’m talking about. The real problem is that we remember too much.

A young guy (in his twenties) will say to an old coot, “Boy the village looks great!” The old coot will respond, “Oh yea? You should have seen it when I was a kid. It was a commercial beehive. We had a lot more commerce: shoe stores, department stores, music stores, restaurants. The sidewalks were packed with shoppers and diners.”

Or, the young guy might say, “I just got a new Chevy; it’s super; it reminds me to change the oil, has built in GPS, 4 speaker stereo; it even lets me know if one of the tires is a little low on air. To which the old coot will respond, “Oh yea! Well, in my day we could fix every thing on a car. Now, a guy can’t fix anything; it’s all controlled by the computer. You’re not in charge of the car; the car is in charge of you.”

You name a topic; we can tell you how much better it was “back then” in the good old days. Especially, when it comes to the cost of things. Mention how much you just paid for gas and you get an old coot eruption. “$3.65 for a gallon of gas! In my day it was twenty-six cents a gallon; pizza was a buck; candy bars were a nickel; movies were a quarter; bla bla bla.” We fail to mention that the minimum wage was eighty cents an hour.

Of course, we heard the same type of gripes from old guys when we were the young guys. Those guys groused about all the changes too. How everything had gone down hill; how stupid the government was. We thought they were sour old crows. “Look around,” we’d say. “Things are great; we’ve got TV, private phone lines, four-lane highways, pizza, cinematic movies, 33 1/3 records, automatic transmissions.” And, they would come back with, “Well, we hardly paid any federal income tax and Social Security was secure. And besides, everything you have you owe to us; we won the wars, the big ones, WWI and WWII.”

It’s the long-term memory that makes old coots into old grumps. We live in two worlds: today’s world and the “back then” one. So, be nice to us; we have a double problem; a long-term memory that is too good, and a short-term memory that is….., oh what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yea, unreliable.