May 24, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is “greeting” challenged.

By Merlin Lessler

The greeting rules have gotten complicated over the last few decades. It used to be so simple. You were introduced to someone, if it was a man, you shook hands, if it was a woman you nodded your head or doffed your hat. (I had to look that one up in the dictionary, to see if I got it right. I did, for a change - to doff ones’ hat, is to remove it or tip it in acknowledgement, a greeting.) I don’t usually wear a hat, so I’ve never done it myself.

Shaking hands with women was the first change. A nice one. An equality thing that eliminated men from feeling stupid or awkward when introduced to women. We no longer had to stand there like an idiot, nodding or doffing a hat. And, it was easier than shaking hands with a man, where you had to be prepared for the other guy to go macho, and try to squeeze hard when you weren’t ready, bringing you to your knees. With women, the civilized gender, you just shake and be done with it.

Then came the hug thing. Who and when to hug? It started as a family thing, a perfectly legitimate expression of affection. Then, it grew, from family to close friends to introductions to new people. Some of them initiate a hug, some don’t. Eventually, it settled into an unwritten rule: don’t hug when you first meet, but if you feel a closeness after spending time with the person/s, a hug is appropriate, even recommended.

Then the “guy hug” thing took off. And, of course, with men involved, it became a competition. The tight gorilla squeeze, the pick the other guy up, the hug from behind with a Ha Ha strangle gesture, the armless hug with two guys jumping in the air and bumping chests, not to mention the fist bumps, hand slaps and all the rest of the nonsense that emerged. The recommended protocol now, is to initiate the hug with a right to right hand shake, lean in and clasp your left arm around the other guy’s right shoulder, pull him in and then lightly slap his left upper back two times. You need to practice to get it right. I mess it up most of the time.

Then there’s the cheek kiss, the air kiss and the cheek to cheek brush. The problem with these greetings is that neither party knows what the other party is going to do and the encounter often goes awry. It might be wise to step back and ask, “Are you an air kisser, side mouth cheek kisser, cheek brusher? And, do you go right cheek to right cheek or left to left?” This is why you often see an old coot like me, standing in the background, trying to figure out who’s doing what or just standing there like an idiot nodding his head and smiling. I guess I’m not quite there yet.

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May 17, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is a Honey?

By Merlin Lessler

It’s a full circle. Like a lot of things in life. When you’re a little kid, just graduated from toddlerhood, you become “Honey.” “Hello there Honey; aren’t you a big boy. How old are you?” At the end of the circle, when you are an old coot like me, an inkling of that former cuteness miraculously shows through and you are “Honey” again. “What can I get you, Honey?” – “Ok Honey, you can come in and see the doctor now.” Sometimes you’re Sweetie or Dearie, but it’s all the same thing.

How you are addressed changes as you go through life’s stages. You’re shocked when a change takes place, like when the kid down the block comes to your door selling Girl Scout cookies and calls you sir or madam for the first time. And, when you are no longer referred to as Jimmy, but as Mr. Robinson. It’s a long stretch, those Mister and sir years. Oh, you do get a Honey, now and then, but mostly in a diner, where the waitress brings you a mug of coffee, complains that her dogs are killing her and asks, “Are you ready to order, Honey?”

So, at present, I’m back in the Honey world. It’s been a long journey. And, I have to admit, it’s kind of nice to be Honey again. My trip to this place had a few detours along the way. I was “Butch” right after my first Honey stage. So much so, that when I entered kindergarten I didn’t know the teacher was talking to me when she said, “Now Merlin, we don’t push in line; you’ll get your turn.” (Merlin? I thought I was Butch.) I transitioned, but not with uniform success. Several of my grade school teachers assigned me to the girl’s side of the classroom when they were making up their seating charts prior to the start of a new school year, thinking Merlin was a variant of Marilyn. I remember when it happened in fifth grade. Miss White was quite put out when she discovered me on the girl’s side of the room and was forced to rework her chart. It was in alphabetical order, so when she inserted me in the middle of the boy’s side of the chart she had to cross off every name after “L” and rewrite them in the new order. We watched her do this at her desk and then get up with a disgusted sigh and order me and half the boys to our newly assigned seats.   

She got even; she kept right on calling me Marilyn. Every morning, when she took attendance and whenever she called on me to go to the board or to answer a question from my desk. The whole room snickered every time she did it. Finally, I’d had enough. The day she said, “Marilyn, come to the board and complete the multiplication of 356 times 2, 475 (or some such unwieldy arithmetic problem.” I stayed put at my desk. She asked again. I sat. Then, she walked over to me and yelled, “Marilyn. I said go to the board!” I looked to my left; I looked to my right, and back to her, and said, “Marilyn? Who’s Marilyn? Not me, I’m Merlin.” She grabbed me by the ear, in that special painful way that all teachers mastered back then, and marched me to the principal’s office, a place I was intimately familiar with. But, it was worth it. Marilyn was never called on in class again. I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I’m Honey now. (It’s better the second time around.)

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May 10, 2017 Article

The Old Coot ain’t no Olympian.

By Merlin lessler

Last year it was skipping! An old coot visit to a childhood memory, from a time when it was common to see a kid skipping down the street, an efficient way to cover a lot of ground with little effort. It was an era before skateboards and jogging came into vogue. I went to Hickories Park, found a secluded spot, and skipped. It was fun! It was freeing, so much easier than the jogging I did for 18 years, but stopped two decades ago to save my frame from destruction. Every so often I’m lured back, and take it up again, but a knee ache quickly reminds me why I quit in the first place.  Skipping, on the other hand, felt good; it was uplifting as well.   

This year it’s a whole bunch of things. I started with chin-ups! All I could do was one, and even then, it took a violent kick to get my head above the bar. I call this attempt to reproduce a series of physical skills I once took for granted my “Last Call” list. I’m going to skip my once famous (in my head) a running, two-handed front flip. I tried it thirty years ago, showing off for a bunch of kids at a birthday party, and didn’t make it all the way around. It took 12 visits to a chiropractor to straighten out my back.  

Old coots often get an urge to revisit dormant athletic skills. Emergency rooms across the country will attest to it. I switched to some easier stuff after my chin-up debacle. I dug out my old yoyo and went to town. I successfully performed Rock the baby, Walk the dog, Thread the needle and twenty Loop-de-loops with a “diamond” encrusted Dunkin yoyo I won in a contest when I was eleven years old. Next, I went for something a little more athletic and resurrected my jogging past. I cheated. I gently trotted down Mountain Road in Owego, letting gravity do most of the work. It doesn’t matter how I did it; I crossed it off my Last Call list.

I plan to check off a few “feats of athleticism” by the end of summer: stand on my head for three minutes -  build up my arm strength so I can do three chin-ups (without any kicking) -  ride my bike three blocks and yell, “Look ma, no hands.” I’ve tried it several times, but failed, blaming it on the bike. But, I know better; I’ll have to work at it. It’s a balance thing, something old coots don’t have much of. I also want to see if I can shinny (*) up a pole or a thin tree and swim the length of the high school pool under water. I could do two and one/half lengths at one time, but will be happy with one length now. If my Old Coot articles are missing from time to time this summer, you can bet I’ve had a mishap and am getting to know my doctor, the emergency room staff and a team of physical therapists a lot a lot better than I’d like. What the heck; it’s worth it. It’s the Last Call. (Until next year.)

(*) Some people say shimmy, instead of shinny, but shinny is the correct term. You don’t dance (shimmy) up a tree, you climb it by pulling yourself up with your hands and then clamping to it with your shins. Then, move your hands and pull up some more. “Shin climbing” ala shinny up a tree. 

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May 3, 2017 Article

Old Coot Doesn’t fit in!

By Merlin Lessler

This is an old gripe. I first wrote about it 12 years ago and nothing’s changed. Just the opposite; it’s gotten worse. NOT ENOUGH SPACE! The space afforded us in most venues is inadequate and getting smaller. My latest adventure, as a giant in a miniature world, was at a Frankie Avalon concert in Daytona Beach.

I get to these theatre things early so I can claim the armrest. The first one there gets it. The last one has to sit with his hands in his lap. That’s the rule! I often wonder, just who is it that designs the seating pattern for these places. It must be a group of skinny and height-challenged people. They size the seats to fit their derriere. The width of the row is undersized as well, so narrow that everyone has to stand up and do a “Twister” maneuver to let the latecomers pass by to their seats. (Why are late people’s seats always in the middle of the row?) Armrests are so skimpy they barely support a single arm, yet two people are supposed to share them. Irish blood flows in my veins and cursed me with toothpick arms, but even they are too big for armrests in modern theaters. I feel like a gorilla when I plop them down. The bigger question is, “Why aren’t there two armrests on each seat?   

We lucked out at the Frankie Avalon concert; we beat the crowd to our row. Sure, I had to knock over an old guy with a cane and a “bluehair” in a walker, but we beat them down the aisle. I scrunched down in my seat and took possession of the armrest. It was mine! I wasn’t moving! Or, so I thought. I hadn’t planned on a leg cramp. When I’m stuck in a seat made for a 10-year-old with my knees higher than my hips and jammed into the back of the seat in front of me, my legs complain with a cramp. It’s mostly physical, but I swear it’s also psychological. My subconscious plays games, to make me look foolish. It says (with a chuckle), “I’ll let the old guy get comfortable and then throw a cramp into his leg; it will force him to leap to his feet and try to kick it out. Ha! Ha!”

My subconscious loves to mess with me. It got me good when I underwent an MRI for the first time. It conjured up an image of being buried alive. It went at me again when I was trapped in an elevator on a cruise ship during a storm. It created a burial at sea image that time. It’s no fun being an old coot with a subconscious that’s a practical jokester. You can easily spot me when it’s on the job, like in a theater. I’m the guy in the middle of the row with beads of sweat on my forehead, a pained expression on my face, sitting next to an exasperated woman who asks, through gritted teeth, “What on earth are you up to now?” (Nothing, just trying to endure a bear trap clamped around my leg)

We’ve got a crisis on our hands with this lack of space thing. Our bodies are getting bigger; the seats are getting smaller. MacDonald’s is blamed for the obesity wave that’s sweeping across America, yet the miniature thinking designers are making things smaller and smaller. Each new project has less elbowroom. Maybe architects are awarded jobs by how many people they promise to squeeze into a given space. “I can get 1000 seats into that theater!” - “I can get 1500!” The contract goes to the highest bidder. Their minimal space designs are everywhere and not just seating areas. They’ve done a number on parking lots. Our cars are bigger; the spaces are smaller. Body shops love it. I don’t dare bring up the space on airplanes. My head would explode. I think we need a new law. Only people who are 6 feet 5, weigh 300 pounds and drive Hummers can become architects. Maybe then we can fit in.

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