December 30, 2017 Article

Old Coot not too old for toy trains

By Merlin Lessler

This is a repeat holiday article, on a four-year cycle. (If I remember in four years.)

I’m an old coot now but I still believe in Santa Claus. In spite of how he tricked me when I was eight years old. I snuck down the stairs on that snowy Christmas morning. The room was dimly lit. Just the flicker from a set of bubble lights on the tree. I perched on a step near the bottom, studying the scene through the newel posts. A dollhouse loomed behind a stack of presents. I knew it was for my sister. But where was my “big” present? I didn’t see anything. Then, I spotted a gleam of light, a reflection from a metal track. Could it be? Was it the train set I wanted so badly? My heart skipped a beat! I hopped over the railing and raced to the tree. There it was! An electric train! A black engine, four metal cars and a red caboose. There really was a Santa Claus! What I didn’t know, was that it would be nearly four decades before Santa delivered MY train. This one was for my father.

Oh sure, I was allowed to place it on the track, switch on the transformer and crank up the dial to send it speeding down the rail. I was even allowed to take the extra track out of the box and change the oval layout to a figure eight and to set up a “Plasticville” village for the freighter to run through. But, it wasn’t my train, not really. It was my father’s. He was the one who carved out a space under the basement stairs two days after Christmas in order to slip in a four by eight sheet of plywood to accommodate a complicated layout. He put lights in the houses, added electric switches, and created an alpine village on a mountain, the same mountain that the train disappeared into after leaving Plasticville. The rest of the fathers in my neighborhood did the same thing. Only Billy Wilson escaped the great train robbery. His trains made it to the attic before his father got his hands on them. Several train sets and a sea of accessories were scattered over the floor. It’s where we went to be railroad men. Nobody was there to stop the fun, to prevent a speeding freighter from crashing into the back of a passenger car or to make us take a cow off the track before it was sent flying into the school house. Billy’s attic was our toy train sanctuary.  

I finally got my very own train set when I was well into my forties. My wife was sick of my drooling, every time we passed by the set of “big” trains in the window at Miniature Kingdom on Front Street, Owego. The store is gone now, but once was the place to go for all things miniature: dollhouses, furniture, figurines and LGB trains. My wife bought a set and put it under the tree. I was eight years old again as I tore the wrapper from the box. I was still there, lying on the living room floor, sleeping like an eight-year-old when the clock struck midnight. The clickety clack of the wheels on the track had lulled me into slumber. It was a sad, drab day in January when the tree came down and the trains went back in the box, forced into hibernation until the next Christmas. Things come slow to old coots, but it eventually dawned on me; I didn’t have to be deprived of my train for eleven months. I could build a high shelf around the room and put the track and train on it. So I did!  Now, I “play” with my trains throughout the year. It’s the best cure in the world for insomnia. Two laps around the loop and I start dozing. When I dream, I’m eight years old and coming down the stairs on that long ago Christmas morning.

Comments? Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

December 20, 2017 Article

The Old Coot didn’t shoot his eye out.

By Merlin Lessler

(A Christmas repeat article)

I didn’t shoot my eye out. Not with a BB gun anyhow. And, not in one of the many BB gun wars we waged in the cow pasture next to the neighborhood where I grew up. (The area is now populated with houses, but back then it was a kid’s paradise, a war zone in the summer and a toboggan & ski resort in the winter). No, I messed up my eye much later in life, when a tree branch snapped back and hit me in the eye while I was clearing the riverbank in Owego. But that’s a story for another day. An old coot story. This is a kid story.

My, “didn’t” shoot my eye out tale took place after I’d paid my dues for years and waited expectantly, like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, to find a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun under our Christmas tree. I’d posed for dorky Christmas cards with my sister, year after year. I’d forgone my desire for a BB gun and asked for eye safe toys: footballs, sleds, board games and electric trains. But when I turned 10, I launch my campaign for a BB gun. My friend Woody, from the next block, had access to BB rifles and BB pistols. I used him and his gun friendly parents as the centerpiece of my campaign. But, things looked glum. My mother batted aside every pitch I threw her way. “Woody has one, why can’t I?” - “Because you’ll lose an eye!”  This was before the term “shoot-your-eye-out” came into vogue. You “lost” things in those days. Your eye. Your arm. Your life.

“No I won’t! Woody didn’t!” She pointed out that Woody wore glasses; his eyes were protected. Something I knew all too well. Especially after so recently doing the dishes for 25 cents every night until I’d earned three dollars to pay for the pair I’d broken in one of our backyard disagreements.

“We don’t shoot at each other. We just pretend to shoot,” I argued, lie that it was, with me sporting a tender, red-rimmed pockmark from taking one in the leg just that morning.

“We only shoot at stuff,” I said, adding to my lie. She was too smart for that. She was as concerned for the “stuff” as she was for my eye. She knew the stuff included dopey robins that remained on a branch, enduring shot after shot, squirrels that scampered back and forth making the adventure even more exciting, the glass window panes in Mr. Soldo’s garage, Mrs. Bowen’s tulips and the Merz’s dog. But, I had an answer for all those damaged goods. It was homemade arrows that misfired in a game of cowboys & Indians that caused all those mishaps. “A BB gun is accurate; it would never damage stuff, ” was my weak-brained argument.

The whole thing was of her fault. She’s the one who dressed me in cowboy suits since before I could walk, who equipped me with two six-gun cap pistols and helped me mount a wooden rocking horse in the driveway with my faithful dog Lassie at my side. How did she not see this growing into lust for a weapon that could really fire? A BB gun!

Christmas finally came, in those waning days of Truman’s presidency. It took what seemed like years, those four weeks following Thanksgiving, when the count down started. I came down the stairs and to my glee, a three-foot long slender package with my name on it was in the back, under the tree. I saved it for last. I unwrapped the mittens knitted by my aunt in Connecticut. And, like the ones she sent every year, they were too short and would leave me with red, raw wrists when I played outside in the cold.

Next came a pair of ski pajamas, the fashion rage of the day. Then, a big surprise, a radio of my own. A radio for my room, so I could listen to Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Suspense and The Shadow in private. Finally came the long skinny box. I tore off the paper. The carton underneath didn’t say Daisy Air Rifle: it was unmarked. I didn’t care; I’d settle for an off brand. I pried open the lid and pulled out the weapon. A single shot, ping-pong ball rifle!

My chagrin lasted less than an hour; I found the lemonade in the lemons. I could shoot at people. I could shoot at stuff! I no longer have that eye-safe, engine of warfare from the 1950’s. But, I do have a BB gun, a Daisy Red Ryder Carbine, No. 111, Model 40. My wife, tired of my complaining, found it in an antique store and gave it to me for Christmas in 1983, the same year A Christmas Story aired and Ralphie got his. It’s a little scuffed up and the squirrels laugh out loud when I stand guard at our bird feeder, but it shoots just fine. And, I haven’t shot out my eye out!

Comments, complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

December 13, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is “Hip” smart.

By Merlin Lessler

Ok, so you need a new hip. A lot of people do. For some, it hits early, in their 40’s and 50’s. For most folks it comes later, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. That’s when our whole darn body starts to fall apart (as so adroitly stated by Henry Fonda in the movie, On Golden Pond). Hips rank high on the replacement list, 400,000 a year in the U.S. Some people, mostly men, claim it’s due to a sports injury. We go for the macho factor, but like most things men claim, especially old men like me, it’s a lie. Most likely the joint got damaged showing off. In my case, doing a running flip in the backyard at my daughter’s 5^th birthday party.

The damage actually started in high school. Not on the football field, but in the halls and walking to and from school. I was too “cool” to use a brief case to carry my books like the nerdy kids. Bookbags weren’t available in that era. So, girls held their books in their arms, pulled to their chests. Boys, held an eighteen-inch stack on their hips and walked at a slant, straining not just their backs, but their hips as well. A classmate would often sneak up on us from behind and push the pile to the floor. Then, with a big grin on their face, say, “Drop a few subjects, did you? Ha Ha.”   

Girls escaped hip stress in high school, but caught up and passed us when they had children. Carrying those rug rats around on their hips does the damage. I marvel every time I watch a young mother doing it. One pulled up at Dunkin Donuts the other day as I was walking by. She hopped out of her car, opened the back door and reached in to untangle a one-year-old from a network of clasps and fasteners that Houdini would have trouble escaping from, placed the kid on her hip, strode around the car to the other door and pulled an infant out of an equally complicated mechanism and staggered inside to get coffee and donuts, I presume for hubby, who was home in his man cave watching a football game. Her hip joint is most certainly suffering from this stress; the damage is slowly but surely taking its toll.

Many fathers do the child-hip-carry thing too, but to a much lesser degree. I did. And, can still remember how much it hurt, especially after a long stint, like watching a parade. But, when my male crowd explains why we’re going in for a hip replacement, we don’t mention it; we stick with the sports injury thing.  I don’t think doctors have made the connection between child rearing and hip problems. If they did they’d use a rating system based on the number of kids lugged around. Minor damage if you have a one-kid-hip, major, if you have a five-kid-hip. Five-kid-hip women need a replacement earlier in life than one-kid-hip women. Fathers, are exempt for the most part. As we all know, they rarely carry their weight (excuse the pun) in child rearing. Yet, with all these hip replacements going on, you would think more parents would use a papoose.

Comments? Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

December 6, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is in hot water.

By Merlin Lessler

I’m a frog! Lounging in a pan of water over a lit burner on a gas stove. Everybody’s a frog. It’s just that for us old guys (*) the water is warm enough to notice, unlike the water that people in their twenties and thirties are swimming in. As you age, the temperature rises, but so slowly you don’t notice it at first. I never felt the change; I just lounged and luxuriated in this unique envelope we call the human body. [Did I lose you? Stay with me; I probably have a point to make, but won’t know for sure until I finish scribbling on this piece of paper while I sit in McDonalds, nursing a “senior” cup of coffee.]

Every once in a while, you get a hint of what’s going on, that rise in water temperature. Those acrobatic maneuvers you pulled off in your teens turn into a disaster when you try them later in life. In my case, it was a running flip in the backyard at my oldest daughter’s fifth birthday party. The next day I was introduced to chiropractic medicine. I felt the water go up a few degrees. A few years later, those three sandwiches I had for lunch, every day since high school, started producing a “beer” belly; the increase in temperature had slowed my metabolism. It does this to everyone. If we fail to recognize it, we end up on that TV show, “My 600-LB Life.”  

Oh sure, there are (or will be for you youngsters) early signs of the predicament we’re in, but for the most part, they appear and then quickly are forgotten, except when a milestone birthday comes a knocking. That 30^th birthday was a shock to me; I never saw it coming. I grew up in the hippie era, when we didn’t trust anyone over thirty. Now, I was one of them. Forty came so fast after that I was reeling. Then I realized that the horror of all horrors loomed ahead. FIFTY! The end of life.

But, the inevitable happened and I slid past the half century mark, babbling inane statements like, “Fifty is the new forty,” or “I don’t feel any different than when I was in my twenties.” That’s what happens when the temperature of the water heats up so slowly. It hides the fact that your goose (frog) is getting cooked.

BAM! The next milestone slams you against the side of the pan, your first social security check. You sense a little more heat. You make the mistake of looking in the mirror, not the quick glance from afar that you usually take, but up close under bright lights. You wonder, “Who is that guy”? But, you get distracted; you look down and notice that the nail on your big toe is orange, distracting you from further study of the image in the mirror. You don’t notice that your ears are bigger than they used to be, as is your nose. Both are sprouting a forest, but you don’t see it. You also don’t realize that when you walk down the sidewalk, it’s not in a straight line. Or, admit that you must sit down to put on your socks, otherwise you will topple over. And, many of “my” people, realize what a mistake they made when they encourage their wife to have cataract surgery. When she came to in the recovery room she covered her eyes and yelled, “WHO IS THIS PERSON?”.

At this point in life, the water has passed the tepid mark and “Ouch” becomes your favorite word. One day it’s your knee that causes it, the next, it’s a crick in the neck that prevents you from turning right on red, because you can’t look left to see if anything is coming. How about that cramp in your leg at the movie theater? It forces you to leap out of your seat and into the aisle to kick it out. You get a look from the people around you that says, “Is this guy possessed?” I have to stop here. Just writing the word, cramp, caused my hand to do just that; I can no longer hold my pen. It’s also getting a little warm.

(*) Guys in this context, applies to both sexes, as approved by the usage police in 1993

Complaints, comments can be sent to mlessler7@gmail.com

November 29, 2017 Article

The Old Coot speaks softly.

By Merlin Lessler

The creation of a LOUD TALKER starts young, around the “terrible twos” stage of development. Not loud talkers at that point. I call them SCREAMERS. They screech and scream about everything. Their sounds make us cringe when we’re within earshot of one at a playground, on the beach, in a store and worse of all, on a plane. We (old coots) turn to each other and give a look that says, “Why don’t their parents teach them not to scream?” Or, more likely, “Why don’t they make that kid SHUT UP!”

But, the parents rarely do, because they have a hearing deficiency; they don’t hear their own children’s screams, just those of other kids. It’s like a high frequency dog whistle to them, well out of their hearing range. So, the kid grows up volume-challenged and the world is “blessed” with a LOUD TALKER, a polite term created by Seinfeld on his innovative 1990’s sitcom. The rest of us use a more familiar term, LOUD MOUTH. Everything a loud mouth does is LOUD! Talk, laugh, sing, sneeze, belch, hick-up. Even their cars are loud, motorcycles even louder. They ride around with their radios blasting so high, it feels like a tsunami has hit you when they pass by. You have to cover your ears to avoid damage to your hearing. The only redeeming value of their loudness is that they always get caught when they try to sneak in and rob a house.

My aunt and uncle were LOUD TALKERS. Aunt Letty and Uncle Harold. They came to visit once a year, leaving their house in New Haven, Connecticut for two weeks every summer. At least they had an excuse for their loud talking. Uncle Harold was hard of hearing and kept his hearing-aid turned down to “save” the battery. He only turned it up when there was something he wanted to hear. He was a loud talker as a result. Aunt Letty became one too, so she could get him to hear her say, “Turn up your darn hearing-aid!”

It drove my mother nuts; she liked the quiet, but I loved it. It distracted her so much when they were around that she didn’t notice my antics. The best part was when they went to bed for the night. They’d talk about the day before falling asleep. LOUD TALK! It carried well beyond the bedroom wall. “Letty, what did you think of that meatloaf? I thought it was so dry I practically had to gag it down!” She’d try to shush him, tell him he was talking too loud. Of course, we could hear that too, since she had to yell to get him to lower his voice. (Which he never did). “Letty, I thought Madeline’s friend was pretty pudgy for a girl her age. A little snippy too.” It was like listening to the late-night news, a recap and commentary on the day’s events. It’s the thing I love most about LOUD TALKERS. They make it so easy to eavesdrop.

Comments, complaints. Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

November 22, 2017 Article

The Old Coot spots a strange process.

By Merlin Lessler

The male grocery buying process! It’s a marvel to behold, akin to the Goodbye Process, the Male Clothes Buying Process, the Male Can’t Fold Process and the other processes I’ve unearthed in my old coot quest for truth, justice and the American way. This one, often goes unnoticed. A male goes into a grocery store in search of 13 items, sometimes with a list, but more likely with the items stored in his head. He’s not the primary shopper in the family; he’s the “pick-up-a-few-items-now-and- then” guy. He sometimes grabs a basket, but more often thinks he can do without, that he’ll be able to juggle the items for the few minutes it will take to get them to the checkout counter.

He goes to the first aisle, passing the stacks of goods on sale and picks up his first item. Let’s call this conquest #1, because this is a war, he’s in enemy territory on a seek and destroy mission. He moves through the aisles in a methodical process, secures all the items on his list in 3 minutes and 27 seconds and heads to the “express” checkout lane. “Coupons? Store card? Need help with the bags? Want to donate a dollar to the bunion scholarship fund?” No! No! No! No! He pays in cash, grabs his bags and leaves. He didn’t get the best buys, nothing on sale, no two-for-the-price-of-one deals, no unit price comparisons. Just the thirteen items on his list in under four minutes. Ta Da! The male grocery shopping process!

There is a modified version of this process. I call it the Early-Bird Grocery Buying Process. It’s usually old guys, like me. Early birds act as though they are in a foreign country when they step into a grocery store: tentative, unsure and anxious. They dart in and start by snatching a newspaper, the New York Daily News or maybe the New York Times, an item in their comfort zone. Then, they go for the few things they’ve picked up before: milk, bread and frozen pizza. When there is something like baking soda on their list they don’t know where to look. It requires a reconnaissance mission, a search through the store, aisle by aisle.

The signs that state what is in each row don’t help, not detailed enough. They are forced to do the unthinkable, ask for directions, something they never do when driving a car and unable to figure out how to get from A to B. But here, in this strange land, and nearly in tears, they ask. And, often the response they get is, “It’s right behind you sir. Just turn around.” That exposes yet another male defect: men don’t know how to look. But that’s a topic for another day.

Comments? Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

November 15, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is a “light” reader.

By Merlin Lessler

Old coots. Old coots who are readers, of books, may have to alter their reading habits as they age. I have anyhow. I’m a moderate reader: 25 to 50 books a year. It’s a habit my mother started me on by reading Uncle Wiggily stories to me every night at bedtime. Then came “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.” Then, on my own, it was comic books (Little Lulu, Superman, Archie and the like). They were stacked up in the corner of my bedroom and grew in height at about the same rate as I did. I started reading books, from the school library, when I was in second grade, but continued to grow the comic book pile too, and to this day, read the “funnies” in the paper every day. Reading fills in the gaps, eliminates boring moments in the day and takes you all over the world, back and forward in time and gives you the opportunity to “walk in someone else’s shoes” to experience life every way imaginable.  

I have a group of favorite authors. When they publish a new book, I buy it or get surprised with it as a gift. I give other authors a test run; I borrow their book from the library, as a cheapskate old coot should. My author list has really grown over the years, but my reading selection has become limited of late. I’m forced to select a book by its weight, the lighter the better; it must be light enough for me to read while lying on my back and holding it over my head.  

It’s just another adjustment I’ve had to make as I move deeper and deeper into old coothood. No longer can I read some of my favorite authors, Stephen King and James Michener to name two. Their books run 800 pages or more and are too heavy for my reading posture. King is writing smaller books of late and Michener died in 1997, but there prolific writing style is still an issue since I re-read many books, generally on a five-year cycle. I’ve had to take their books out of the rotation. I don’t have enough arm strength to read more than a page or two at a time.

I’ve been reading books of 400 pages or less for the last year or so, but it’s evident I’ll soon have to lower my limit, maybe to 300 pages. Unfortunately, most books on the best seller list have more pages than that. I’m headed into a reading dead end. Oh sure, a Kindle would solve my problem, and I have one, as well as a Kindle App on my phone. I read on those electronic marvels now and then, but they just don’t cut it as a mainstream reading mechanism for me. Talking books don’t work either; they take me back to when my mother read me to sleep. I went out so fast it took a week for her to get through a single short chapter. I fade out even faster today.

I’m sure I face more surprises, more adjustments, as I journey down the old age jungle path, but I didn’t expect this one. I don’t know why I was surprised; I’m well acquainted with the aging process. My doctor has clarified the issue on many occasions over the past 25 years. Whenever I quiz him about my latest quirk, his response is always the same, “You have to expect that at your age.” If I could just find a copy of that Uncle Wiggily book, I’d be OK. That was a light one.

Comments, complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

November 8, 2017 Article

The Old Coot fights the fear mongers!

By Merlin Lessler

It’s the end of the world! Civilization is doomed! Life as we know it is over! This is what someone would think if they woke from a fifty-year coma and turned on a radio or TV. EVERYTHING is a crisis of epidemic proportions these days! Media descriptions of unfolding events claim them to be: the worst ever, the hottest, coldest, driest, longest, most tragic, never before seen, or some such apocalyptic description. Each new twist and turn in civilization seals our fate.

How did we get here? Scared to death by the media. Living in dread of an impending doom. It’s especially puzzling to those of us who, when we were small children, were exposed to the fable of Chicken Little, who panicked and ran around screaming, “The sky is falling,” when an acorn fell on its head. Apparently, Chicken Little grew up, graduated from Journalism or Meteorological college and is now employed by network news and cable.

Oh sure, there are tragedies of staggering proportions taking place. Nothing new; thousands of years of history tell the same story, yet the world still spins; the sun comes up every morning, despite REAL natural disasters, like the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 that resulted in “the year without a summer,” and that of Krakatoa in 1833, an explosion 13,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It created a tidal wave that circled the earth 3½ times, dropped global temperature by 1.2 degrees for 5 years and sent ash plumes 50 miles into the atmosphere. Kind of makes the conventional wisdom that strives to keep us in constant state of fear over climate change seem a tad dramatic, if not downright silly. Ours, is a resilient species, but you’d never know it from the Chicken Littles who dominate the media and the scientific community. If they were around in prehistoric times we’d still be cowering in caves.

It’s time to push back. Before Chicken Little has us running for cover every time a raindrop plops to the ground (or is simply in the forecast). It’s time to scoff at the apocalyptic descriptions that are employed to panic us into staying tuned. It’s time to reject the gloom and doom, to stop stampeding like sheep in a state of fear and dread. Flowers are blooming all around us. Turn off your radio; turn off your TV, and smell the roses.

Comments, complaints, new things to fear? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

November 1, 2017 Article

The Old Coot wants a piece of the pie.

By Merlin Lessler

You made it! You’re a millionaire! Not as big a deal as you might think. You’re in a crowded arena. There are 4,400,000 (4.4 million) millionaires in the United States. (Boy did I take a wrong turn along the way. Maybe more than one.) The real big deal, is the 400 Club, headed up by the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg. The 400 wealthiest Americans, according to Fortune Magazine, which creates the list every year. The average member is worth $6,000,000,000 (that’s six billion dollars in plain language, but I like to write it out to see just how many zeros it takes to make a billion). It almost, but not quite, makes you feel sorry for the poor guy at the bottom of the pile; he’s only worth a mere $1.7 billion.

There are a lot of wannabes, who hope to join the ranks of the 400 club someday, 156,000, to be specific, who have assets worth $25 million or more, pikers by comparison, but way ahead of everyone I know. None of them worry about paying off a college loan, making a monthly house payment and probably aren’t on the budget plan with their local utility company. Even so, I can’t help but think that they are missing a great adventure in life, making a go of it in the lower 99 percentile. They never experience the glee of making that last car payment, burning the mortgage or seeing their credit score finally begin to climb.

Many members in the 400 Club are generous with their wealth. They dole out millions, to well deserving individuals and organizations. It makes life better for many people. Even the “poorest” member in the 400 club can afford to be generous. If he hands out a million dollars a month for 100 years he’ll still have several hundred million to get him through a rainy day, even a monsoon and a hurricane season or two. And, why not share the pie, other than bragging rights, what good is having more money than you can spend in a lifetime, in several lifetimes. If this message touches one of you in the 400 Club, with a soft spot for old coots, my checking account number is 3895674217 and the bank routing number is 066000078, or you can just contact me at mlessler7@gmail.com. I’ll come over and pick up the check! 

October 25, 2017 Article

The Old Coot missed what you said. HUH?

By Merlin Lessler

My wife Marcia and I were on a cruise in the Irish Sea, headed to Dublin a few weeks back, killing time until the announcement to go ashore was made. Sitting with us in the buffet area was a couple from Hawaii. Actually, only the wife was at the table, her husband was wandering around with a plate of food, looking for her. He finally shuffled over and sat down with a sigh. “I couldn’t find you,” he exclaimed. She glared at him, rolled her eyes and replied, “I told you I’d be at the table under the picture of the Titanic,” and then turned to us and said, “He never listens!” We knew she was right, my wife more aware of it than I, but even I’ve been around long enough to know it’s true. My wife responded to the woman from Hawaii, but I don’t know what she said. I wasn’t listening.

It’s not our fault. We try to listen. We’re positive we hear everything our wives tell us, but we don’t. I think it’s a right brain, left brain thing. When somebody talks, we are all ears, for about ten seconds. Then our brain switches to a sports mode. It drags up an image from our high school days, scoring the winning basket as the clock winds down to zero. Technically, it doesn’t drag up an image; it invents one. We never had a moment like that. The sports mode of the male brain can’t distinguish between fact and fiction.       

It’s not just our wives we don’t listen to; it’s everybody. It’s why we get in so much trouble. We’re in a conversation; the other person talks and talks and then stops and looks at us and says, “So, do you think it’s a good idea?” We have no idea what they are talking about, but we never admit it. “Sure,” we respond. “That’s a great idea.” Then we discover that we just loaned our car to our neighbor’s teenage son for the prom. “How could you do that?” our wife asks. “It sounded like a good idea at the time,” we lamely respond. “You had to be there.”

I’m so glad women are getting into leadership positions in business and politics. It was a tough road without them. If a woman had been in charge of Ford Motor Company in the 1950’s, when the sales team made the pitch to introduce the Edsel, she would have listened to them and then listened to the engineers that said it was too soon; the bugs hadn’t been worked out. As it was, Henry Ford the 2nd, who, may I point out, is a man, was daydreaming about the Detroit Tigers when the discussion took place. When asked if they should move ahead and introduce the car in the 1958 model year, he said, “Sounds like a good idea.” (It turned out to be the biggest lemon in automotive history.) No, we don’t listen. And everybody pays a price. It’s why the world is in such a mess these days.

Comments? Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

October 18, 2017 Article

The Old Coot can’t taste the difference.

By Merlin Lessler

It started with wine. Wine tastings to be specific, that complicated analysis of wine qualities: nose, legs, body, tartness, zest, oak tones, fruit hints and the like.  Descriptions that go on, ad nauseam. Rarely getting to the only thing that matters, “Does it taste good?”

Then, it moved to coffee. Starbucks lured us into a gourmet world of caffeinated beverages and made a long and steady pull on our pocketbooks, forcing Dunkin Donuts and other coffee vendors to follow suit. There aren’t many places left to order a cup of Joe and not get a puzzled look from the server.

Now, beer is in the game. What was used to be a simple selection process: beer or ale? Pick your brand. Some brands offered bock beer in the fall, but that was it, an uncomplicated selection process. Then came light beer, starting an avalanche of options. Dark beers, lemony beers, non-alcoholic beers, hoppy beers and now, hundreds more, as craft beers have gone mainstream. And, like wine, there are tastings, and a host of descriptive terms to describe the variations. It’s becoming harder and harder to buy a cheap glass of beer, a tragedy of crisis proportions for me and my fellow old coots, the world’s greatest cheapskates. It’s just beer to us, what once was the low priced adult beverage, but not anymore; the cost of that amber liquid with a frothy white head has increased, along with difficulty to know what to order as you gaze down a line of taps as long as a bowling alley. 

Wine snobbery, beer snobbery, what’s next? Not water. That commonplace, everyday beverage went snobbish decades ago when imported, bottled French water moved the price tag higher than a gallon of gasoline. It’s just a matter of time before the next commodity is repackaged and marketed to appeal to the snob in us. At a higher price of course. But, what will it be? Peanut butter? Kool-Aid? It’s too late for a lot of food items. The organic movement has been making inroads into the grocery industry for several years now. The simple egg has been reborn as a high priced “healthy” variation, Eggland’s Best. Tomatoes and other vegetables have a dual price option, the demonized regular variety, and the politically correct, organic choice, which are the same crops we grew in our back yards, practically for free. Now, we pay dearly for them. I’m going to get some of my old cronies together over a glass of cheap beer and see if we can figure out a way to afford to continue to eat and drink in the new gourmet world we live in.    

Comments? Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

  

October 11, 2017 Article

The Old Coot can say, “You’re welcome.”

Bb Merlin Lessler

We’ve forgotten how (and when) to say, “You’re welcome.” No, this isn’t another rant about the “younger folk” replacing, “You’re welcome,” with, “No problem.” I beat that horse to death a few years back and have come to terms with it, despite cringing a little when I’m on the receiving end: I wonder if I would have gotten the service I’m thanking them for if it was the least bit of a problem. Enough said; on to today’s “You’re welcome” issue.

I hear, or actually don’t hear it, from a lot of people. It’s especially prevalent when a reporter on TV or radio has managed to get someone to come on the air and discuss some current issue. At the end of the session, the reporter thanks the person for answering their questions (though, if it’s a politician they rarely get any real answers, just a wind bag exhibition that goes on and on so long the reporter forgot what the question was.)  At any rate, most interviewees get a well-deserved, “Thank you,” and most of the time reply with, “Thank you.” Not, “You’re welcome.” I get it, when it comes from a politician; he or she should be saying, “Thank you,” since the reporter let them get away with murder. But, most everyone else responds to a thank you from the reporter at the end of an interview by also saying “Thank you.” I’d fall out of my chair if I ever heard them simply say, “You’re welcome.”

Now where do I go with this? It’s a small complaint and I’ve made my point; watch TV or listen to a radio interview and you’ll see what I mean, but there is no sense in continuing to crab about such a minor issue. I’ll switch to another issue, the opposite of the “You’re welcome” equation, the people who can’t, “Thank you.” Not because they aren’t appreciative, but rather, because they are overwhelmed with appreciation. You know the type. We all know the type, and probably have done our fair share of it ourselves: responding to someone’s generosity or gift giving, with – Oh, you shouldn’t have! – I can’t accept this; it’s way too much – Oh my gosh! This is insane! - I’m so sorry; I didn’t get you anything. It’s hard, apparently, to just say, “Thank you!” If you’ve read all the way to this point and haven’t torn the paper to shreds, all I can say is, “Thank you.” 

October 4, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is under attack!

By Merlin Lessler

I’m ready to go to the police. To file a harassment complaint. I’ve had it! This constant assault on my mental stability, my anxiety level, my well-being. BY MY CELL PHONE! I’m going through the day having a wonderful time doing old coot stuff, like checking around to see who has the best early bird special and my phone attacks me, “Your battery is getting dangerously low, only 35% remaining; plug it in immediately!” Or, some such paranoid outburst. “Plug me in or I’m going to shift to an energy saving state and you’ll be sorry,” it continues. The process reminds me of the Jimmy Carter era, when he bugged us to turn down the thermostats to save energy, wearing a cardigan to show that he was doing it.  

 My phone is more insistent than Carter was. Besides, I view a 35% battery level as quite sufficient; I’m getting around with a lower percentage of energy than that and I’m doing just fine, now that I’ve added an 11am nap to my recharging schedule. I’m up at five or six in the morning, take my first nap at nine, another at four, and now my new nap, an hour before lunchtime. These naps only last for five minutes or so, but they allow me to function with a glass half full, so to speak.

My phone doesn’t agree. It has a “glass half empty” personality. I try to ignore its panicky pleading, but at every new low, it yells at me. It is harassment, pure and simple! It used to be worse. Every App on my phone was after me: You have a new e-mail – I-Heart Radio has added new features - Facebook has notices for you. – The Weather Channel has an alert. I figured out how to turn off all those notices. But, I can’t figure out how to turn off the battery level hysteria program.

It wouldn’t be this bad if the programmers that create software would ask old coots to provide input. Maybe, a focus group or two. We’d tell them to change the battery warnings, from harassing to nurturing. Have the screen say, “Wow! – You have 35% battery left; that’s a lot! Enjoy!” Or, “Wow- Your battery is running down. Soon you will be out of touch; won’t that be nice!” We’re out here, but nobody asks.

Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

September 27,2017 Article

Old coots are multi-task masters.

By Merlin Lessler

My crowd, my old coot crowd to be specific, is critical of the Z Generation (people born between 1996 and 2010). We don’t call them Gen-Zers; we simply refer to them as today’s kids. It’s a generational thing, for the old to criticize the young. Probably because we are jealous of their youth. They aren’t jealous of anything about us. Anyhow, this attitude of, “The worlds going to pot,” (because of the kids who will soon be running things) has been around for a long time. Even Cicero, the famous Roman Politician and scholar, was dismayed at the attitudes and actions of the youths of his day. He argued that they needed vigorous ethical and moral instruction if civilization were to continue. That was 2,000 years ago; I’m sure the attitude goes back even further than that. Cavemen, most certainly, were critical of the behavior of teenagers in their day. “Look at that fool kid going out on a date and forgetting to bring his club!”

Today’s criticism is focused on Gen Z’s excessive multitasking. Doing too many things at once and not doing justice to any of them. “Look at that kid! He’s doing his homework; his Geography book is open and he’s glancing at it, but he’s also listening to loud Rap music, texting back and forth to his girlfriend, checking his Twitter and Snapchat feeds, munching on a burger and conversing with a study mate across the room. That’s not how we did it in my day!” (Old coots often remember things the way they wish they were, not the way they actually were). Anyhow, it’s a foolish criticism coming from someone of my generation. We’re the masters of multi-tasking!

When I, or one of my kind, head out the door, to a coffeeshop in the morning for example, it requires the juggling of several critical tasks. #1 – We have to remember why we went out the door and where we are headed. Otherwise, we’ll stand there, stuck in place like the needle in a worn groove on a record (try to explain that one to a Gen-Zer). Task #2 - As we step onto the sidewalk we have to check and keep checking our balance and (Task 3) pick up our left foot a little higher than normal, so it doesn’t cause us to stumble. It’s been a little floppy lately. (Task #4) We have to focus on walking in a straight line. If we don’t, we’ll wander from one edge of the sidewalk to the other in a pattern that might provoke a cop to arrest us for public intoxication.

We multitask to such a degree, it’s no wonder we appear daffy to others. It helps explain why, when you pass us on the sidewalk, we never call you by name. Instead, you get,” Hi lady” or “Hi neighbor” or “Hello Governor, “ or some such cover up for a memory lapse. You rarely get called by name. Maybe, on a day when the floppy foot isn’t acting up, but we’d probably just replace that memory task with another one - that dentist appointment we have at two, or a reminder to call Bill about the change in the golf schedule next week. Everyone needs to stop criticizing teenagers for multi-tasking. They will need the skill when it’s their turn in line for the early bird special.

Comments, complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

September 20, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is Going Deaf.

By Merlin Lessler

An oldie but a goodie. It’s been in the closet for 7 years; time to let it out again.

My hearing is going to pot! And, it’s not an old age thing either. I figured out what’s causing it. Hand dryers! The kind you find in public restrooms. Usually with a sign extolling the advantages of electric dryers over paper towels. “They save paper (natural resources) and prevent the spread of germs.” Bull! It’s cheaper. Plain and simple! I hate these things. Their whine is so high-pitched it damages your hearing. I can’t hear the croak of bullfrogs or the honking of geese because that section of my hearing range has been wiped out. These torture machines are especially hard on old coots. We’re exposed to the noise a lot more than normal humans because our bladders have the same capacity as a ten-dollar bottle of eye drops, half an ounce. It’s a defect in the genetic code. When we sign up for Social Security, the old-coot gene kicks in. It shrinks our bladders, makes our joints creaky, our eyes itchy. The latter is why I know the cost of a smidgen of eye drop solution; I buy a lot of it. People complain about the price of gas but it’s nothing compared to the price of eye drops. Do the math: a one-half ounce bottle is $10. It takes 256 bottles to make a gallon, bringing the cost to over $2,500. And we worry about gas companies ripping us off!  

Old coots spend half their time in public rest rooms, drying their hands. We’re acutely aware of how lousy these torture machines are. We wash our hands and get in line for the dryer. It’s a long wait. The guy at the head of the line pushes the button and starts the process. It takes a full minute to dry his hands in the luke warm air that screams from the nozzle. Most men don’t have the patience to wait their turn. They take one look at the old guys in line, shrug in disgust, wipe their hands on their shirts and walk out. Old coots can’t. If we don’t dry our hands they get so chapped we have to buy Corn Huskers lotion by the gallon. Medicare doesn’t cover eye drops; it doesn’t cover Corn Husker’s. We’d go bankrupt if we skipped the hand dryer. 

Every once in a while, I forget what I’m doing in a public rest room and splash water on my face. That’s usually when I discover the dryer only blows in one direction. Straight down! I can’t swivel the nozzle to get the air to blow toward my face. I get down on my knees, tilt my head toward the ceiling, lift my hands to direct the flow of air to my face and close my eyes so they don’t dry out. People entering the rest room take one look at this praying spectacle and run for their lives. Eventually, I get dried off and leave the place. A few more sections of my hearing get damaged. Now, it’s not just the croaks and honks of frogs and geese that are lost to me. I also can no longer hear the sound of someone saying, “Hey! It’s so good to see you! You look so young and healthy!” At least I think that’s what happened, because I never hear it anymore. 

Comments, complaints? Send to – mlessler@gmail.com         

September 13, 2017 Article

The Cat Got the Old Coot!

By Merlin Lessler

I’m putting this out here now, well in advance of the actual event, so you will know what really happened when you read in my obituary that I had a dizzy spell, fell down the stairs and broke my neck. It won’t be the truth. It’s the cat that killed me, not a dizzy spell.

It won’t have been a malicious act. It’s just a cat doing what cats do. They like to follow old coots around and toy with them, the same way they taunt and tease a mouse. If you get up from your chair to walk out of a room, a cat will wake from a sound sleep, rush ahead, dive to the floor and roll over on its back. Directly in line with your next footstep! That’s OK when the room is well lit and you’re paying attention to where you’re going. You can spot the cat and step over it, avoiding a hip-breaking tumble to the floor. But, if the room is poorly lit or if you are reading the paper as you walk, like old coots often do, you’re in for a long hospital stay. If the cat gets you on the stairs, you’re done for. I’m forced to walk around the house without picking up my feet; it’s the only way to avoid injury or death. It’s why old coots shuffle along, barely lifting their feet. Cats make us walk like that, not old age.  

Our cat, Rosie, named after the great (and now, late) blues singer, Roosevelt Dean, has a nasty habit of climbing up on the bulletin board in my office and pulling out a pushpin. He bats it around for a while and then leaves it in a strategic spot for someone in bare feet to step on. When it happens to me, I perform an acrobatic leap that more often than not, leaves me limping. Sometimes he burrows under a throw rug to hide and leaves a big hump in the middle. The last time he “got” me, I did a back flip, one that would have most certainly earned a perfect “10” in an Olympic competition.

Our cat has lion DNA. He lurks behind things and leaps up as I pass by, getting my heart beating so fast I have to sit down. He refuses to drink water from a bowl, insisting on fresh water from the tap. This works fine when I remember to turn off the faucet. I’ve flooded the laundry room more than once when I was distracted and forgot the water was on. There is an angry debate raging across the country on how to lower the cost of health care. It’s too complicated for me to know what should be done, but one thing that would significantly reduce the strain on the system is to cat proof the houses of old coots. It would save millions in the repair and rehabilitation of broken hips, wrists, elbows, shoulders and skulls. Of course, it might help if we paid attention to where we were walking instead of trying to remember why we are going there.

This column was originally published in 2009. A good friend of ours, and Roosevelt, recently adopted him, reserving visitation privileges for us. It was a hard decision, but since we are away from home for sizable portions of the year, it was the only one we could make. Rossie never did end up breaking my neck, just my heart.

September 6, 2017 Article

The Old Coot says, “You stink!”

By Merlin Lessler

Old guys are nice. Especially, old guys who’ve graduated from Old Coot University. If you stink, they say, “You stink!” It could be anything you stink at: mowing the lawn and leaving clippings all over the sidewalk - singing karaoke and making the crowd wince when you screech off key (though you feel you’re headed to stardom) -  broil a steak on the grill that you call perfect, but it’s black on both sides, tough as shoe leather and inedible. Most of the time, no one says anything, or if they do, you get, “Good job,” about as meaningful as the “participation” trophy kids are handed at the end of a soccer season, a season where every game ended in a tie. But, that’s not what you get from old coots. We say, “You stink!” And, not just at your performance, but when you actually stink, reek, or otherwise offend the olfactory nerves of those around you. It’s a kindness, to be told you stink when you don’t know it. That’s just one of the positive contributions that we old coots make to society.

We weren’t always as blunt as that: we too, ignored the obvious, in a misguided effort to avoid hurting people’s feelings. But, we eventually learned to say, “You stink!” when it’s warranted (and ignored by everyone else). We learned the hard way, by hanging around with old men when we were in “old coot” training. -  “Hey Lessler! Do you know your sweater’s on inside out and backwards? Ha, Ha, Ha!”  -  Or, “Hey Lessler, did you decide not to comb your hair today or is that your new fashion statement? Ha, Ha, Ha!” - or -  “Hey Lessler, do you always leave your car door open when you go into a restaurant? Or don’t you have enough strength to shut it and want me to go do it for you. Ha, Ha, Ha!” Saying nothing, or worse, saying, “Good job,” is not a kindness; it’s mean.

An enlightened person, when confronted with a “truth” pronouncement from an old coot, says “Thank you.” Let’s face it, you want to know this stuff, despite the embarrassment it causes. A little one-on-one embarrassment is better than prancing around with your pants on backwards, coordinated with a wingtip shoe on one foot and a sneaker on the other as you go from table to table in a restaurant, asking if anyone found your glasses while a pair of bifocals rest on the top of your head. The next time an old coot tells you, “You stink,” (or the equivalent), just say, “Thank you.” It will save you from going around with a long stream of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe or an enchanting smile adorned with a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth.  “You’re welcome.”

Comments? Complaints! Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

August 27, 2017 Article

No more Sunday drives for the Old Coot.

By Merlin Lessler

A Sunday afternoon Drive! That last century, family ritual, is long gone. In the first place, there is no Sunday, not like the ones I grew up with, when the world slowed down for a day to catch its breath. Most stores were closed; you might find a drug store open, though they offered very little merchandise other than drugs. Here and there a gas station operator was filling tanks, to service people traveling. Mowers, hammers and saws were silent. Even the dogs knew enough not to bark. You could hear the quiet. It was wonderful.  

Mom and Dad hopped in the front seat with the “little one” nestled between them, perched in a canvas car seat, cranking on a fake steering wheel in synch with dad’s turning maneuvers. Siblings, Dick, Jane, and dog Spot, stretched out on a sofa size back seat. The windows were down so Spot could hang his head out the side and catch the exotic scents in the country. Off the clan went, into rural America, for a visit to Aunt Millie’s or just a lazy sightseeing tour with plenty of things to gawk at: farm houses, barns, rows of corn, unmanned produce stands, junk yards, ponds, hay stacks, grazing cows and horses, wandering chickens and oddities that have long since disappeared, like mailboxes perched atop ten-foot poles with, “Place bills in here,” or, “Airmail,” hand lettered on the side.  

No! There are no peaceful Sundays or relaxing Sunday drives anymore, not ones with commerce throttled back to 10% and a world at rest. Nor, is there a quiet rural road where it’s safe to poke along and gawk at the sights. I know; I try to recreate the experience from time to time; all I get is frustration. As soon as I slow down to gawk, someone will come speeding up from behind and ride my bumper. I can see they are yelling at me in my rear-view mirror. I pull over to let them pass at the first opportunity, yet still get a raised fist instead of a thank you wave. In the old days, you only received an uncivil gesture from a riled teenage male, riding a wave of testosterone. Today, it’s just as apt to come from a young mother with two kids strapped in car seats. Equality takes many forms.

I have found a replacement of sorts, a six AM Saturday morning drive by myself (who else would get up that early for such a mundane event except some old coot). It’s a sort of sunrise memorial service for me, to commemorate that long-lost Sunday drive. Most of the time, I find a world at rest and can poke along and contemplate the beauty of the countryside and novelty along country lanes. The only hard part for me, on my environmentally incorrect excursion (driving for the pleasure of it) is to find my way back home after wandering deep into unchartered territory, with the unsettled feeling that I might be driving right into a Stephen King horror story. But, I am starting to learn my way around the rural back roads of southern New York and northern Pennsylvania. It ain’t a Sunday drive, but it’s the next best thing.

Comments. Complaints. Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

August 23, 2017 Article

Old Coot Joins the Mole People.

By Merlin Lessler

Well, it’s happened again. I’m forced to change my ways to fit into a changing world. This time it’s drastic. I have to become a mole person, to learn to live in the dark. I’ll have to function between eleven at night and six in the morning. The rest of the day I’ll sit idle and keep my electric usage at a minimum. NYSEG launched a “Smart Meter” program with the installation of the first such device in an Ithaca residence last month. Smart meters are expected to be installed in 1.2 million customer’s homes by 2022 at a cost of $400 per meter. I did the math; that’s a $480,000,000 expense. I sure don’t want to be stuck with the bill, so I’m becoming a mole person.

These meters are really smart; they keep track of when you’re using electricity so NYSEG can charge you based on the instantaneous cost on the grid. More people use electricity during the day, so the price will be higher than at night. There are several periods when the cost will be astronomical, like at the wake-up hour, when factories and offices are firing up and a legion of teenagers are into their morning ritual, the “hour of shower.” I’ll have to alter my life style to fit into this evolving high-tech metering world. The cheapest rate will be between 11 pm and 6 am. That’s the only time I’ll be able to afford the stuff. I’ll live out my life in the dark; I’ll turn into a mole person.

It’s like being in grade school all over again, except this time around it’s not a tattletale telling the teacher that I’m chewing gum in class, it’s a smart meter telling the NYSEG billing people that I turned on the dishwasher at noon. The theory is, when I get the bill for using electricity at peak periods, I’ll change my ways. (Provided they can revive me after seeing what I owe). I’m not going to wait until my new meter arrives; I’m converting myself into a mole person now. It’s going to be hard. I’ll get up at 11 pm, take a shower, turn on the TV and start the coffee maker. Electricity should be cheaper at that time of day. Then I’ll put on my miner’s hat, switch on the built-in light and go out and mow the lawn. I hope the neighbors don’t complain. But what can you do? When I finish the yard work, I’ll take a stroll into downtown Owego. The Owego Kitchen, Carol’s Art & Coffee Bar and Dunkin Donuts will be closed. Harris Diner will be closed. Riverow Books will be closed. I won’t have any place to stop for a chat. After a while, people will wonder what happened to the Old Coot, why he’s not around anymore.   

My whole identity will be stripped away. I won’t be the nice old guy you see around the village. I’ll be that weirdo that slinks through town in the dark, in a minor’s helmet. Eventually, I’ll get stopped by the police and questioned about my odd behavior. They’ll ask me my name and I’ll have a senior moment. I won’t be able to come up with an answer. They’ll take me away. My family will report me missing. You’ll see my picture on bulletin boards in supermarkets and on utility poles, right next to the photos of missing cats and dogs.

Maybe that’s what they had in mind, the real reason they came up with the smart meter. They want to rid the world of old coots. I found out who’s to blame. It isn’t exactly NYSEG. The Public Service Commission is the instigator behind the scene. You know, the same group of zealots who made the utilities sell their generating plants and now force us to select a supplier every year or so. They said it would introduce competition into the marketplace and give us choices and lower prices. That didn’t work out so hot, so now they have a new plan, “smart meters.” I tried to call the PSC to complain. I called at 11 pm, during my mole hours, so the electricity I used in looking up their number was the cheap stuff. But nobody was there. An answering machine picked up and told me to call between 8am and 5pm. Apparently, they aren’t getting ready for a smart meter at their place. They probably haven’t bought any minor helmets either.

Comments? Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

August 16, 2017 Article

The old coot can’t can wait.

By Merlin Lessler

It starts when you’re four years old. “I can’t wait until I’m five and can get on the bus with the big kids and go to real school.” It keeps going: can’t wait until I’m double numbers (10 years-old) – can’t wait until I’m sixteen and can drive the car – can’t wait until I’m eighteen and can vote – can’t wait until I’m 21 and can buy beer (legally for a change). Then you hit a “time neutral” zone. No more of the “can’t wait” attitude. You are OK with how time is passing.

The honeymoon comes to an end. Time passage starts to become an issue, but in reverse. You start the long slide into, “Oh my gosh; has it really been “X” years?” It starts at your tenth, high school reunion, your first encounter with that “GOSH; where did those ten years go?” A whole bunch of 10-year markers come along: 10the wedding anniversary – 10 years on the job – 10 years in your house or apartment. It’s like a swarm of mosquitos, biting you from all sides.

It ramps up: 20 years on the job – 25^th wedding anniversary – 30-year class reunion. It’s making you feel uneasy. This “Gosh I can’t believe it’s been that long” thing is out of control. It becomes a crisis when 50 enters the picture. First, with a shock, you turn FIFTY! Then, it’s your fiftieth class reunion, and you ask yourself, “Who are these people?” (These old people) Name tags are required reading for the first time. And, the lies come in handy too, “Oh, you look just like you did in high school. I’d recognize you in a second.” Lie, Lie! 

Now, you’re desperate to slow it down. Exactly opposite of when you were fifteen, wishing it would pass so you could drive a car. But, it’s too late. You get your wish from the past; time passes quickly. But, it doesn’t just fly, it bolts along at warp speed. Your first-born turns fifty! Your house turns fifty. Your clothes turn too: that sweater is 22, those shoes are 35, that favorite shirt is 15. When will it end? But, deep down, you know when it will end, and you finally put stock in the adage, “Live for today; it’s all you’ve got.” (Sorry. I’ll be more upbeat next week. I promise. I can’t wait till it gets here.)

Comments? Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

August 9, 2017 Article

The Old Coot can’t finish a sentence.

By Merlin Lessler

Conversation jumpers? Conversation stealers? I’m not sure what to call them and I’m not sure why they do it. Maybe it’s a physiological disorder – people afflicted with a bad case of “interruptionitis.”  They jump in when you’re telling them something. Anything! Everything! Before you get to the point, they leap to what they think you are going to say. It goes something like this. You say, “I was walking to town the other day and it started to rain.” They interrupt and say, “And, you got soaked!”  - You correct them, “No! I opened my umbrella just as a wind gust shot down the street.” They jump in again with, “And, your umbrella blew inside out. Don’t you hate that?” Again, you say, “No!” And add, “It didn’t affect my umbrella. Mine is windproof; it has slits built into it so the wind escapes and it doesn’t blow apart. The wind gust that hit me blew the rain sideways and then I got soaked.” They get a smug look on their face and say, “So, you did get wet, like I was saying before you interrupted me!”

Your head explodes! They jumped in, stole your story twice in one minute and you end up in the hot seat, accused of interrupting. The trouble is, this isn’t a rare disorder. This condition, this affliction of interruptionitis, has become epidemic. It forces the affliction on you; it’s the only way you can get a word in edgewise. You can see the affliction in its advanced stage when you watch a news commentary show on TV. A host and a handful of guests spend the entire broadcast interrupting each other. They finish the talker’s thought and jump to a wrong conclusion. They bomb each other with a barrage of words to counter a point and prove the other person wrong. These shows start out OK; you think you might actually learn something, but soon enough, they become unwatchable. And besides, the only thing they discuss anymore is politics of the Washington DC variety. Like there is nothing else going on in the country or the rest of the world worth talking about.

It has caused me to become infected with the interruptionitis affliction myself. As soon as the political wrestling match begins on TV, I interrupt with my remote and jump the conversation to channel 57, to watch people buy and fix up houses. At least the discussion on those shows comes to an amicable resolution. Somehow, we’ve got to confront this interruptionitis epidemic. I don’t think a “Just say no” (or “Stay mute”) campaign will do it. A “count to ten” technique might offer a solution. Counting to ten helps people with hot tempers. Counting to ten tempers the impulse to blow one’s stack. Even if it doesn’t cure the conversation stealers, the ones with severe Interruptionitis, it might just give the rest of us ten more seconds to make our point once in a while.

Comments? Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

August 2, 2017 Article

The Old Coot takes a wrong turn.

By Merlin Lessler

I don’t know if you’ve turned into the Owego Treadway or the Tops Plaza off Route 17C lately, but there are new rules in place. The old turning lanes have been cross hatched with white painted stripes and new signs installed as you approach the turn-off: “STATE LAW - DO NOT DRIVE ON SHOULDER.” Someone, and we never get to find out who, makes these decisions, which are always, “For our own good.” He/she/it decides to mess up a system that worked great for years. They do this all the time. Never with input from the public, and worse, never with input from an old coot.

I pulled up to the turn off the other day to go to a Rotary meeting at the Treadway. I defied the “STATE LAW” and pulled onto the old turning lane despite the white stripes and the scary sign. Three cars behind me did the same thing; it made me proud! To know that civil disobedience (in its mildest form) is alive and well here in the land of the free. Which, has been on a long downhill slide into the “Land of too many Rules.” Oh sure, there probably was a fender bender a time or two, when someone turned into a car in the turning lane. That’s usually why this stuff gets imposed on us. Someone makes a stupid mistake, and some remote bureaucrat decides to fix it. The rest of us end up in a world shaped by stupidity.

Thirty some years ago, a school bus stalled on the tracks at a railroad crossing. Now, every school bus is required to stop before going over the rails, open the door to peer to the right, look out the window to the left and then cross. When are most vehicles likely to stall? When they start out from a dead stop, putting school busses at greater risk than they were before the rule was created. One stupid mistake - a rule forever in place! Politicians and bureaucrats view the world from a nanny state perspective. They have an obsession to “fix” every stupid mistake we make. There is a bill right now working its way through congress, to prohibit old coots from expressing their opinions in print. All because of one stupid old coot overdid it. ME!

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July 26, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is going to the dogs.

By Merlin Lessler

This is one of those articles that necessitates a warning label, a “Don’t try this at home kids” kind of thing. Be warned – the following is not a vetted scientific thesis, it’s the rambling, semi-informed opinion of an old coot. (Now my lawyer can breathe a sigh of relief)

So, you found a tick on your leg. Panic sets in. LYME DISEASE! We all know, or have heard of someone who has been stricken by this mysterious disease, first identified in Lyme, Connecticut (thus the name) when a cluster of young kids came down with arthritis in 1975. Not all tick bites get you the bobby prize; it’s a lottery. Maybe it will; maybe it won’t. The first time you find a tick on yourself you rush to the doctor or a walk-in clinic, “I found a tick on my leg!”    This is where you have to be prepared. TO LIE! Because, the first thing the doctor will ask is, “How long was the tick on you?” If you give any indication that is was attached for less than 24 hours, you’re going to be sent off with a recommendation to come back for a dose of antibiotics if you develop a bull’s eye rash or experience flu symptoms. Unfortunately, those two indicators don’t always show up, yet you still get the disease.   

If you are a dog with a tick bite, you get the antibiotic treatment right away. So I hear. A dog can’t answer the, “How long was it there,” question; it just wags its tail. The dog doctor mentality is along the lines of, “What can it hurt; why take a chance? Give the pup the antibiotic.” Not so, for humans; the protocol is just the opposite. “Let’s take a chance; we don’t want to overprescribe antibiotics. Studies show that most of the time it takes 24 hours for a tick bite to result in Lyme disease.” MOST OF THE TIME! Ask any person suffering the long-term debilitating effects of Lyme disease what they think of a protocol that plays the odds and takes a chance with your wellbeing. They will say, “I’d rather be treated like a dog!”

Oh, by the way, if you are a dog, you can get a Lyme disease vaccination. It’s not perfect, only 80% effective, and it requires a few booster shots. But, if you can’t bark; you can’t get it. (I’m practicing my dog imitation). The only pharmaceutical company that sold the vaccine pulled it off the market in 2002. Another company was about to offer it, but decided not to, because the Lyme vaccine got caught up in the wave of anti-vaccinations that was churning through society at the time and didn’t want to get entangled in class action lawsuits. It would cause problems for a pharmaceutical company today if they offered it.

Us humans are left wishing we could lead a dog’s life. We don’t get the medical protocol we deserve; we get prevention advice: wear long pants and tuck them in your socks, put on long-sleeved shirts, wear gloves and a hat, spray yourself with bug spray containing Deets and check yourself for ticks whenever you come in from outdoors. Old coots like me, get a real chuckle about this advice. It sounds as complicated and as uncomfortable as getting prepared to enter a bio-hazardous area. Check for ticks the size of a poppy seed? And, do it every time you come in from outdoors? We can’t bend and stretch or see well enough to do that. And, it’s impossible to hire someone who can. There’s not a single listing in the yellow pages for tick checkers.

We’ve created bureaucracies in our modern society to protect us from ourselves, but they don’t always operate with common sense. It will be years, if ever, before a Lyme disease vaccine is offered again. If they’d only ask an old coot, any old coot, he’d bark and then tell them what to do.

Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

July 19, 2017 Article

The Old Coot Elbows His Way Through Life.

By Merlin Lessler

I was swimming laps at the high school pool the other day and experienced yet another affirmation of the aging process; my left elbow started killing me. HOW SORE WAS IT? It was so sore, I could only pull it through the water at one-quarter speed. When you do that, and your other arm is working fine, you swim in a circular pattern, not a straight line. I’d take three strokes with each arm and then bang into the side wall. Three strokes, bang; three strokes, bang. It was a nice cadence, but not very effective when your objective is to get from one end of the pool to the other without hurting yourself. I eventually backed off with my right arm and was able to swim a lap in sort of a straight line. But, it took me four times longer than normal to swim from one end of the pool to the other.   

A sore elbow is a serious condition for an old coot. We rely on our elbows. It’s a mechanism we use all the time, usually to get the attention of a poor soul standing next to us when we want to make a comment about someone or something. First, you feel the elbow; then you get the derogatory remark. It’s hissed out of the side of the old coot’s mouth, “Look at that young fool over there; his eyebrow is pierced!” You take a step to the left, to avoid another elbow but it doesn’t work; he moves with you. Then you get it again. This time you’re ready for it; you tense up to save yourself from a sore rib cage. He then says, “Look at him now; he’s getting into the car with that gorgeous babe!” You want to say, “Of course he is, you old coot. He’s “with it” and you don’t even get it.” But, you hold yourself back, deciding it’s better to keep your mouth shut and get away from him before the elbow starts up again. 

                       

The “old coot” elbow is developed over a long period of time. It starts when an old coot gets married and he and his wife have a child. The wife feels “it” for the first time when she gets home from the hospital. She drifts off into a deep sleep, the first one in months, now that she can sleep on her stomach. She’s in dreamland, lying on a tropical beach with a hotel staff seeing to her every whim. WHAM! She’s startled back to consciousness by a triple elbow to the ribs. “What?” She cries. The lump next to her in bed says, “The baby is crying.” Somehow, she manages to get up and drag herself over to the crib. The “elbow” has been born. She’ll eventually learn that it has a large vocabulary. For now, it just says, “The baby is crying!” Soon enough, it will say, “Josh threw up,” or, “Somebody’s at the door.” The “elbow” will dominate their relationship.

At cocktail parties, it will be used as an escape mechanism. She’ll feel the elbow in her ribs, followed by a whispered, “There’s Helen and Jim; let’s sneak into the other room so they don’t talk our ears off. Besides, I owe Jim fifty bucks” Eventually, she’ll develop an “elbow” of her own. It will be more than a match for his; the female version comes to a sharper point, one that can fracture a rib if the user gets over excited. It too, is used at cocktail parties, as in, “Did you see that awful dress Midge is wearing?” If hubby doesn’t acknowledge the comment fast enough, he’ll get a second helping. This only happens once or twice. After that, he never fails to respond immediately.

After twenty-five years of marriage, the “elbow” loses its effectiveness. Both parties develop thick calluses on their rib cages. If an intruder breaks into the house and she elbows him, to say, “I heard a noise downstairs; go and check it out,” nothing happens. The old coot goes right on snoring, dreaming he’s accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He struts across the stage in a dazzling white tux, like a Hollywood star at the Oscars. In real life, if he ever got any kind of an award, the picture would be quite different. He’d limp and shuffle across the stage in a dark blue suit. The static electricity in his pant legs would have them clinging to his white athletic socks, a good three inches above a pair of mismatched shoes, one brown, one black. A size “42-L” tag would dangle from his sleeve, the one he missed when removing the rest of the Sear’s stickers because his elbow was too sore to reach it.

Complaints? Comments? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

July 12, 2017 Article

The old Coot tries to clean up his image.

By Merlin Lessler

What a nut job! I’m sure that’s what strangers think when they drive by me as I walk through town and I wave to them.  Or, on the other hand, “What a snob,” when friends wave from their cars and I don’t wave back. Both are right; Nut Job, Snob, but, it’s not me; it’s them, or rather, their cars. They all look alike, all SUVs look alike, all sedans look alike. Different makes of automobiles are hardly distinguishable. I can’t tell a Ford from a Mercedes. Not in a quick glance anyhow. In the good old days (here comes the old coot in me) when cars had a distinctive shape, color scheme (2 and 3 tones if you can imagine that) and the glass was clear; you could identify the car and more important, you could see who was inside. And, correctly wave, or not.

So, here I am, walking around in a world where half the time I wave at cars I think might be driven by someone I know, but they aren’t. And, get labeled, that “Nut Job” in Owego who waves to cars. The other half of the time, I don’t wave when I should. When I take a stroll up Davis Hill (struggle and gasp my way up is a more accurate description) cars wiz by so fast I never get a good glimpse in the window, so I wave to every car. It’s a self-defense gesture, a thank-you for not hitting me. After I’ve climbed for a few minutes, I don’t wave to anyone; I’m too tired to raise my arm.  

We need a rule, a societal norm, that says a person driving a car, who sees someone they know walking on the sidewalk should give the horn a toot to say hello, not just a wave. Then, old coots like me, and regular people too, can wave back. We still may not know who we’re waving to, but at least we won’t feel quite so stupid, waving when we shouldn’t, not waving when we should.

If you adopt this suggestion, despite the fact it’s coming from an old coot and not Ms. Manners or Emily Post, you might want to practice tooting. It’s not easy to produce a friendly sounding honk. That air bag squished into the middle of your steering wheel makes it hard to produce a polite, “Toot”. Quite often, you get no result at all, panic, and slam on the horn, producing a loud, angry blast. It startles the recipient, not at all the friendly, “Hi there,” you were shooting for. Here’s the deal. You toot, I’ll wave. Even if it’s a mistaken identity. I won’t be a snob anymore and I won’t be that nut job that waves at all the cars. It’s enough of a burden just being an old coot.

Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

July 5, 2017 Article

The Old Coot still doesn’t get it.

By Merlin Lessler

It started earlier, but I didn’t realize it until I was in my thirties, the aging process. It was the day I showed some kids in my back yard, probably at one of my daughter’s birthday parties, how I could do a running flip. I’d done it a “million” times when I was a kid. The running part went well – the flip part, not so hot. I landed on my seat, not my feet. I’d lost some agility over the years. My only thought, two weeks later when the ache had vanished, “I’ll get better.” (at doing the flip. At restoring my ability to do a flip). “I just need to turn back the clock a little,” I told myself, blind to the obvious truth, the aging process is a one-way street.

It kept happening; every decade brought new flops to the forefront. I had taken up jogging when I was in my twenties, slacked off and then picked it back up in my mid-thirties. It took two months before I could go around the block without stopping and gasping for breath that time round. More proof that the aging process was quietly at work. Eventually, I got the rhythm and was doing four miles every other day. “I’m going to do this forever! It’s so freeing! Well into my nineties,” I professed. My arrogance was limitless, like I could take getting into my nineties for granted. Then came my forties. I left behind the six-minute mile I did once a year on the high school track and ushered in the “why is my back aching so much” and the “sore knee” era. Followed by a few other conditions as my physicality digressed from a forty-year-old frame to a fifty. I was sure I’d get better, still believing the aging process was a curable malady.

My fifties started OK. “What’s the big deal?” By 54 I knew the answer to that question. I was forced to trade in the jogging sneakers for walking shoes, and add swimming and bike riding to make up for it. “I can take this routine into my nineties,” I told myself. “And, pick up jogging again, as soon as I get better!

Wham, Bang! In what seemed like fifteen minutes, there were 60 candles on my birthday cake.  The old coot was born. He was a tad wiser than that arrogant 30, 40 and 50-year-old self. Wiser, but still delusional. Every once in a while, I’d try jogging. It seemed easy the first week, and then my aging frame brutally reminded me why I’d given it up, hurting as much as that running front flip/flop disaster three decades earlier. Did I gain any wisdom? Not much. I still thought, “I’ll get better.

Introduction: Sometimes an introduction doesn’t fit at the beginning of an essay. Sometimes it belongs in the middle, or in this case, at the end, after I’ve finish my rant and wonder, “What is the point?” I guess this time, it’s my compulsion to report what lies ahead, for readers who, like me, never expected to get old. Or, I’m trying to give voice to myself and my fellow old coots who are youth, energy, flexibility, balance, health and memory challenged. To report that we aren’t asking for special treatment, just not to be marginalized and discarded out of hand. We’re not all there, that’s true, but we think we’ll get better. Let us live with the delusion.

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