The Old Coot sits in exile.
By Merlin Lessler
I’m sitting here in exile. Call me old guy #1. Next to me is
a guy wearing a baseball cap and white knee socks (old guy #2). Across from us
is a guy with a cell phone attached to his belt (old guy #3). We’re outside a
shop called Bahama Mama’s in Flagler Beach, Florida, a small town half way
between Daytona Beach and Saint Augustine. We’re here on the porch, three
strangers, waiting for our wives who are inside scouring the racks and shelves.
The sign next to the door promises: exotic gift baskets, tropical metal art,
island décor for inside and out and key lime products. No men allowed! Well, it
doesn’t actually say. “No men allowed,” but it might as well.
I don’t know what any of those things in the shop are; yet,
I know I’m not interested. I’m also not interested in sitting on a porch with
two other old guys who also don’t want to be on the other side of Bahama Mama’s
door, but it’s what we do! You see us all over the place – sitting on benches
in malls – sitting in cars in shopping center parking lots or waiting outside a
house in a residential neighborhood with the engine idling while our wives are
inside concluding a “Good-Bye” process. We’ve said our good bye, a simple,
“Thanks for having me, hope to see you soon,” turned to our wives, thinking
they might do the same. Instead, they say, “Hang on a sec,” and turn to the
woman hosting the affair. A second turns into a minute, then five minutes. We
stand by their side like idiots, finally interrupting the Good-Bye process, to
say, “I’m going out to warm up the car.”
We’re a patient bunch, us old men, having been around long
enough to understand the waiting process. We gave up throwing tantrums long
ago, the ones where we acted like five-year-olds, tugging at our mothers’
skirts and whining, “Can we go now?” Yes, we gave that up, figured out how to
kill time and let the world spin without us.
We’re fairly compliant, us old guys waiting around. But,
sometimes our subconscious takes over and retaliates, causing us to do
something stupid, like “accidentally” taping over our wedding video with a
Super Bowl game. It balances things out, in this battle of the sexes that’s
been raging since the first caveman invented the club and took himself a wife.
She then initiated the first Good-Bye process. As they left a neighbor’s cave,
she turned to the female host and asked, “Where did you get that hide; it’s
adorable?”
We’re more civilized about it now, but the battle continues.
Psychologists, social scientists and anthropologists have studied the phenomena
for centuries. Concluding nothing and simply throwing up their hands in
frustration and mumbling things like, “Men are from Mars; Women are from
Venus.” In my world it’s simpler; Women shop and Men sit. End of story.
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