March 25, 2015 Article

The Old Coot can’t handle a schedule.

By Merlin Lessler

Someone will ask an old coot like me, “Do you want to get together next week for lunch?” I reply, “No, sorry; I’m tied up next week.” Tied up? With what? A busy seven-day agenda? Absolutely not. Most likely, it’s a single thing for the week. A dentist appointment on Wednesday at 9 o’clock, for example. That’s the way old coots are. We can only do one thing a week. The pressure of two or more items on our calendar is more than we can mentally handle. Even the one thing can cause an anxiety attack

Monday rolls around and the activity clock begins. It’s a long “to-do” list for most people. For us old coots, it’s time to start fretting about that 9 o’clock dentist appointment on Wednesday with Pam. We putter our way through the day, doing this and that, trying to keep our mind off the obligation hanging over our head two days hence. Now mind you, it’s not the dentist procedure that causes the anxiety, it’s the fact that we have to do something, at a specific time, on a specific day. We’re used to doing whatever we want, whenever we want. We put a lifetime of a calendar running our lives behind us. The life that started when we turned 5 and had to go to school. It grew from there; Little League practice, piano lessons, Cub Scouts. We grew up, got married, had kids and the daily agenda grew with us. Then, the kids grew up and left and we grew old, retired and found ourselves like preschoolers again, with nothing on our schedule.

After 60 years of an agenda, we embraced the new found freedom. People ask, “What do you do all day?” At first, we feel guilty and rattle off a list of activities: work out at the gym, house repairs, volunteering, Rotary, Elks, etc. It’s a boilerplate list that we spit out to cover our guilt over having nothing to do. That’s how it starts, this retirement thing. Some people can’t handle it; they get a job, sign up for everything in sight. But, a true old coot gets over that guilt trip pretty fast. We’re busy, but on our terms. We’ve had a taste of what it’s like to be 5 years old again and we like it. Ask us to put something on our calendar and we resent it, even stuff we love to do. The answer is always, “Maybe, I’ll have to check my schedule for the week.” (We might have room to do one thing. But, it will have to be pretty good to get us to write it down.) 

And, when the day comes, to do the one thing on our calendar, we initiate the old coot appointment strategy. It’s called, get there on time. If the appointment is for 9 o’clock and entails a 30-minute drive, we leave the house at 8 o’clock. Just in case we run into traffic, a detour or the car breaks down. It’s part of the oath we take when we’re sworn into old coothood; be on time, and better yet, be early. So, there I sit in the dentist’s office with a 30-minute wait. When it’s over, I climb out of the chair and walk to the counter with gleaming, professionally cleaned teeth. I breathe a giant sigh of relief; my calendar is clear. But, the revelry comes to a sudden stop as I go to leave and the secretary says, “Don’t go yet, Mr. Coot; we have to schedule your next appointment.” I shriek, and run out the door.