March 19, 2014 Article

The Old Coot knows how to say thank you.
By Merlin Lessler

I watched the Academy Awards the other night. I’m not an adoring fan of the Hollywood set, but the “Oscars” usually provide a gaff or two that make it worth watching. Oh sure, I appreciate a good acting performance, just like I appreciate the plumber when he fixes my sink (especially after I tried and failed) and the guy who makes my pizza. They’re great at what they do, as much or more so than the actor or actress that hits their mark on a stage or studio set. But, I’m at odds with the people who put movie starts on a pedestal, above the guy who fixes their car.

Just once, I’d like to see a winner accept the Oscar, turn to the audience, Say, “Thank you,” and walk off the stage. Instead of going through an endless list of names that nobody in the viewing audience knows or wants to know, thanking them for their help, without which they couldn’t have performed so excellently; the make up person, the director, the screen play writer, (everyone but the security guard at the studio gate). Just say, “Thank you,” and SHUT UP! Instead, we are treated to an unending stream of incoherent drivel until the stage crew drags the ego in a suit (or dress) off the stage.

What a horrible world it would be if we all acted that way. “Dear, that was a great dinner!” – “Why thank you. And the electrician that connected the stove, the grocery store clerk that bagged the ingredients, the old coot who stopped his car before backing over me in the parking lot and my mom and dad for teaching me to open a can and use the microwave and blah, blah, blah.”

Even a simple thing like holding a door open for a person would turn into an elongated acceptance speech, “I owe it all to the carpenter who installed the hinges and the knob, the architect who made the space wide enough to fit through, but most of all, to my third grade teacher, who taught me how to turn a knob and inspired me to keep working until I mastered the skill.

Oh yes, the Academy Awards offer so many examples of how not to behave; it’s definitely worth watching, especially if you’re out of the loop and forced to keep asking, Who is that?” and, “What are they talking about?” You do it so often that everyone in the room eventually turns to you and says, “Would you please shut up!” Which is exactly what you’d like the audience at the Oscars to say to the winner 15 seconds into an acceptance speech. And now, I’ll take my own advice, and shut up.

March 12, 2014 Article

The Old Coot can wait.
By Merlin Lessler

Here I go again. Providing unwanted advice in yet another attempt to help men from Mars get along with women from Venus. This time it’s for men who are “fast leavers” married to women who are “slow leavers.” It goes something like this. He asks, “Ready to go?” (To the store, across country, across the street. It doesn’t matter.) She replies, “I’ll be right there.” Off he goes, gets in the car, starts it up, tunes the radio to a sports station and watches for her to come out the door.

Two minutes go by. Then five. He starts getting antsy, “What the heck is keeping her?” Another five minutes tick off the Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist. He starts to boil. He gets out of the car and goes to the door. Here she comes, two bags in her hand. One, to drop off at her mother’s, the other to be donated to the Mission. “You don’t mind do you?” she asks as the car bolts out of the driveway, nearly hitting a woman walking down the sidewalk.

“What took you so long?” he asks, gritting his teeth to help keep his mad face under control. The reply is a long one, “Oh, I had to take a load of clothes out of the dryer and fold them so they wouldn’t get wrinkled. Then I noticed the mirror in the bathroom was all spotty from when you washed your hands so I wiped it off. The dishes in the sink looked messy so I rinsed them and stacked them up to dry, in case someone came in and saw them. On and on and on…” All legitimate things. “BUT,” he groans, “You said you were ready to go!” She says, “I was. Almost.”

It doesn’t matter where you are going; the scenario is always the same. The problem is created by the “slow-leaver” but the solution lies with the “fast-leaver.” Even a rat in a maize eventually learns how to navigate the obstacles between itself and happiness. But not the men, fidgeting and fuming, while waiting in the driveway, outside the door at an antique shop, on a bench in the mall. Always surprised she’s not there, like she said she would be. He believes her when she says, “Just a sec!” Even though it’s never been just a sec. He’s one rat that never found his way to the cheese.

Here comes the good part. Advice from an old coot who learned this Mars versus Venus thing the hard way. (Waiting impatiently for years!) But, no more; the path through the maize is simple. It’s called, “Facing reality. You are going to wait! Longer than you think! And, more often than you think. So figure out how to spend that interval between a slow-leaver saying, “I’ll just be a sec,” and the time it actually takes her to get there.

Set up your car as though it were a man-cave. A 19-inch flat screen TV is a good start. A cooler full of beer and a cabinet loaded with chips, candy and nuts is a nice addition. Top it off with a vibrating, “feels like real fingers” massage seat cushion. That will get you through the maize. If she takes so long that you’ve emptied the beer cooler, then you get the bonus prize. You won’t be allowed to go.

Get yourself a man bag for the waiting you do outside the car. Nothing in leather! Get a canvas one that has a military look. Load it with a crossword puzzle, an I-pod, a camera, a sports magazine and three snicker’s bars. This will get you through most waits at a mall or on a bench outside an antique store. Use the camera to take pictures of the old coots waiting for their wives who just sit there with a scowl on their face. It could go viral, even funnier than the images of Wal-Mart shoppers that circulate on the Internet.

March 5, 2014 Article

The Old Coot, “No speaka yo name!”
By Merlin Lessler

Not all the people I associate with are old coots. Some are in their 40’s or 50’s, though many are older than that. What’s my point? It’s that I converse with people that are young enough to have fully functioning memories. Yet, every single one is “name” challenged. It’s so bad they’ve almost entirely given up names and replaced them with elongated “people” descriptions.

“Who bought the brown house on Main Street,” someone will ask? – This is what you get in reply, “You know the big guy that works in the meat department at the Super Duper with the black VW convertible you see parked in the M & T lot on Friday night?” – “Yea, I know him!” – “His sister bought it.” That’s how we converse. It’s a small town thing. We know everything about everybody except their name. We don’t use names.

I guess it’s a habit that developed as a short cut. We got tired of saying Betsy Smith broke her leg at the ball game last week only to be asked, “Who is she?” And, then saying, “You know, the woman who used to live next to the library with the Great Dane.” Now, we skip the name and go right to the description. It’s an American Indian tradition. But, instead of descriptive names like Sitting Bull and Running Bear, we trot out complicated, descriptive substitutes in an attempt to precisely explain the “who” we are referring to.

This can get a little irritating, like when you overhear your own descriptive name. Besides “Old Coot” I’ve heard myself described as “That old guy who lives on the corner of Front Street that shut his coat in the car door, with his keys locked inside and had to stand in the cold like an idiot until a passerby noticed and went to his house to get a spare set of keys.” You then realize just how complicated this naming process has become. And, you have many more names than you imagined. In my case: That grouchy guy in the front window at the Goatboy Coffeebar – The guy who comes in here and never leaves a tip – That old guy who rides his bike through red lights.

If you have a common name, the shift to no name at all is a quick, two-stage process. First your name is coupled to a partial description and then disappears entirely. Take Mike, for example. There are 14 Mikes around here that I know of. Mike in the brick house on the curve – Mike the Irish music guy – Mike who sings in a barbershop quartet – Mike who can fix any plumbing problem, Mike, Mike, Mike. No Mike is ever, Mike. Not around here. Nancy is another name in widespread use. Lunch Lady Nancy – Nancy Fancy Pants - New Nancy – Jewelry Nancy – That Other Nancy. There’s Nick, Young Nick, Soccer Nick, Bank Nick. All lose their name in rapid fashion. Do you know your name? Maybe you should find out. Then again, maybe you don’t want to know.

February 26, 2014 Article

The Old Coot’s shoes don’t fit.
By Merlin Lessler

My shoes don’t fit! Neither do my socks! (This is one of those back to the good old days things; you might want to get off the train before it pulls out of the station.) Still there? Here we go! It’s not just me with a shoe and sock problem. It’s not an old coot thing! It affects everybody. The people who make shoes and socks are “close enough” people. Not very precise. Kind of like the landlord that rented me an apartment that didn’t have a sink in the bathroom. Something I failed to notice when I did a walk-thru. When I complained, he said,” You can lean over the tub to wash your hands and face. (It was “close enough” to a real bathroom. It had a toilet, a tub, a medicine cabinet and a light. What more could I want?)

Take the shoes; if your foot is 10.94 inches long, you’re in. A size 11 will fit perfectly. If your foot is a 1/4 inch longer, you have to buy the next larger size, a 12. And, walk around with your foot sliding back and forth. It’s even worse if you have a narrow foot. They don’t make shoes for narrow feet. Only wide, and extra wide. Us narrow feet people wobble side to side in our shoes. It’s why we are so cranky – our foot bones bend and twist all day in ways they were not designed to move.

You get the double whammy when your feet are narrow and just long enough to push you into the next larger size. They slop both side-to-side and front to back. It feels like you’re doing the twist when you walk; your “dogs” really get barking by the end of the day. Back in the good old days (here it comes) you could select the proper width – from A to triple E (EEE being the widest). And, you could pick a length that closely matched your foot. You didn’t have to choose between two sizes, shoes came in ½ sizes too. Not anymore. At least in any of the stores I’ve been in. No half sizes; no narrow widths. And, to make it worse, modern day shoelaces are made from a synthetic material that won’t stay tied.

Then there’s the socks. Buy socks to fit your feet? Not on your life. It’s sort of like a knit bag: slip in your foot and hope for the best. It all started back in the 1960’s when a cheapskate sock maker eliminated the toe and heel and came up with tube socks. The rest of the knitters jumped on board and stopped making socks that fit. Gold Toe, one of the major sock companies only offers 2 sizes (for men) - Size 10 /13 (for shoe sizes 6 to 12) and Size 13/15 (for shoe sizes 12 – 16). Socks are either too big and wad up in your shoes or too tight and make your toes curl. You wonder why you’re so grouchy. It’s your shoes and socks.

Hippies solved the problem in the late 1960’s; they went barefoot. But, all the stores and restaurants retaliated; they put up signs that said, “No Shirt - No Shoes - No Service!” The young people of today have started a second shoe/sock revolt. They don’t wear shoes or socks, but they don’t go barefoot; they wear flip-flops. No matter what the weather. No matter what the occasion. Soon there will be new signs appearing in stores and restaurants. “If you have flip-flops on your feet; keep walking down the street!” Right next to the, “Old Coots not allowed” sign.

February 19, 2014 Article

The Old Coot knows when to quit.
By Merlin Lessler

CVS Corporation is giving up cigarettes! Good for them! It was stunting their growth, according to a spokesman. Just like my mother predicted when she caught me puffing on one of my father’s cigarettes when I was 10. I quit too. But, relapsed when I got to high school. It’s not easy, this quitting cigarettes thing. I tried it many times before I was successful.

Of course, we don’t really know if CVS will succeed. They’re not going cold turkey. They’re promising to quit in October. It’s never a good idea to announce breaking a bad habit way ahead of time. You usually don’t follow through. Like many cigarette quitters, they are doing it for the money. They expect to profit in the long run by cleaning up their image as a health provider.

Unfortunately, the PR people got involved and decided to use it as an image-maker, to gain positive publicity. They just couldn’t resist mentioning, over and over, the 5 billion in sales revenue they were giving up. Of course, that doesn’t tell the whole story. PR people never do. They aren’t losing 5 billion in profit, only gross sales. When you take out the cost of the cigarettes, the tax, the cost of the lock cabinets they keep the stuff in, the clerk’s time to get the cigs and the sales of other products that can be displayed on the tobacco shelves their loss in profits is quite small. But, it’s a nice spin from the PR people. As a former PR spinner myself, I have to give them credit for a masterful job of grabbing headlines for something they haven’t even done yet, and with nobody asking, “Why not quit right now?”

I’m thinking of buying a pack before they give up the habit in October. As a souvenir. For my great grandchildren. Framed and authenticated as one of the last tobacco purchases at CVS. In 50 years it could be a winner on the Antique Road Show. A $5 pack of cigs worth $5,000. Unlike the old pack of Pall Malls from the 1950’s I have kicking around in a box in the garage. It’s a 20-cent pack that my grandfather kept in the top drawer of his dresser after he quit. In case of an emergency. It’s never been opened.

I wish CVS luck, the company, but not the PR guys. I still think they should have gone the John Wayne, cowboy movie route. Kept their mouths shut and just quit. If someone noticed and asked about it, they could have looked down at their feet, kicked up a little dust and said, “Shucks maam; it was nothing.”