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