June 27, 2018 Article

The Old Coot takes a trip down “no memory” lane.

By Merlin Lessler

It all started with a simple question. Big Mike was the instigator. He was trying to come up with the three music icons who started Farm Aid.  “There’s John Cougar Mellencamp, Willie Nelson and?” There was a long pause, and then he said, “Matt, who’s the third one?”

Matt scowled for a few moments and said, “Why did you have to ask me? I knew it, and when you asked it flew right out of my head. I can picture the guy in my mind (where else, in your arm?). It’s right there on the tip of my tongue!” It’s funny how lost memories make it all the way to the tip of our tongue and then disappear.

That is a typical conversation with the guys I have coffee with. Everything goes along fine, then a memory lapse surfaces, usually a failed attempt to come up with a person’s name or the name of a restaurant. It’s often something I know nothing about because I’m the old guy in the group, and out of touch. Except, when Ray shows up, then there’s two old guys. The rest of the group is decades younger than Ray and me, yet their memories have as many holes as ours, at least some of the time. When it happens, I stay quiet, because I spent all my memory cells making sure my shirt was on right-side out, my shoes matched, and I brought my wallet with me.

It's the highlight of my day when these “youngsters” exhibit memory issues (like mine).  When it’s an inconsequential fact that has slipped away it gets funny. “Was it September or October? Let me think,” a story teller will get stuck, and say. Then his eyes will roll up into his head, as though the tidbit he is searching for lies there waiting to be retrieved. Everybody will yell, “Forget what month it was, what did you do when the guy pulled out a gun?  DUH!”

I feel defeated when it’s my turn to get yelled at. Which is why it’s such a treat for me to watch Paul or Daren or Matt or Andy or one of the Ricks, or even the baby of the family, Eric, scramble to come up with a lost fact. I chuckle to myself and don’t let on what has me concerned. That I can’t for the life of me remember if I drove my car to the Owego Kitchen or walked. I do not want to go out the door and head down the street only to be yelled at by one of them, “Where are you going? Your car is back this way.” I try to make sure I’m last to leave. When I remember to, that is.

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June 20, 2018 Article

The Old Coot explains medical “procedures.”

By Merlin lessler

This article (now modified) was originally published in April 2004. I was startled at the time, because Doug Worthing came up to me and said, “I liked your article on procedures.” (He’d just undergone several) That was the first time I knew that someone actually read one of my old coot rants. Doug and I have had many “procedures” since then, but nothing has changed. So, here it is again. 

I underwent a medical “procedure” at the hospital. A procedure is 3rd on the list of invasive things they do to you in the hospital: #1 is major surgery, #2 is minor surgery. Major surgery is any operation on you; minor surgery is what they do to somebody else. A “procedure” is a close relative of major and minor surgery. It’s about as uncomfortable and painful, but insurance companies won’t pay to have you knocked out for it. You have to take it on the chin. The word "procedure" is used so you won't be afraid, so you'll show up.

When I was a kid my mother dragged me kicking and screaming to the doctor to have my eardrum punctured to ease the pain of an earache. I had it done so often that I knew what was coming the minute we pulled up to Doctor Bowen’s office on Oak Street in Binghamton. They didn’t call it an eardrum “procedure” in those days; they told it like it was, “We’re going to puncture your ear drum.” The AMA has gotten a lot smarter since then; the PR committee settled on using the word “procedure” for the painful, uncomfortable things they do to us; it was a stroke of pure genius. I just wonder why the medical profession is the only group to do so.

Big corporations should use it when they reduce their work force. Who would suspect anything bad when called to the boss's office for a "paycheck procedure”? The guy who installed a new roof on my house could have softened the blow, if after inspecting my roof, he said I needed a "shingle procedure" instead of a complete tear down and replacement. Even our local meteorologist would enhance his image if he'd just tell us to expect a "precipitation procedure" rather than 20 inches of snow. Your spouse’s lawyer might say you are about to undergo an uncoupling procedure, not a divorce. When you reach for your wallet and discover it’s empty after a day at the mall with the kids, you can say you underwent a wallet procedure, not that you’re broke. And, when you get robbed at gunpoint, you can take solace that you just underwent a sudden money transfer procedure, not armed robbery. 

The medical profession has always been out in front with the clever use of language. They’ve used Latin for centuries to describe the components of the human anatomy, so we will think they are smarter than we are, and so we won't know what they are about to do to us. They claim it's because Roman physicians were the first to dissect and then identify our body parts and thus gave them Latin Names. I don't buy it; I think the AMA stuck with Latin to keep us out of the loop, to keep what their members are doing a secret. They did the same thing with the metric system. Even though our country measures things in pounds, ounces, quarts, gallons, feet and inches our physicians discuss things in grams, cc's and centimeters. It's why it takes so long to get a medical degree, four years to learn the medical stuff and four years to learn Latin and the metric system. But, their best idea ever, came when they adopted the term, procedure. Have you had one lately.

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June 13, 2018 Article

The Old Coot learns the truth.

By Merlin Lessler

I stumbled across two quotes recently. Both were comments about the youth of today and the dire effect their behavior will have on civilization.

 #1 – “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.”

#2 – “The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no respect for their parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone know everything and what passes for wisdom in us, is foolishness to them. As for girls, they are foolish and immodest and unwomanly in speech, behavior, and dress.”

You hear this kind of stuff all the time when you eavesdrop on a group of my old coot brethren. We think the world is going to pot. Every time one of us says something similar to the quotes above, we say, “Right on!”  - “Couldn’t have said it better myself!” The other day, I read these quotes to a group of old guys I sometimes get together with and got the response I expected, “Right on!” That’s when I sprung the trap and revealed that the first quote was from Hesiod, a poet born 700 years before Christ, the second from Peter the Hermit, who lived in the 11^th century.

It shut them up. It shut me up the first time I learned how ancient these opinions of youth are. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, to realize that people in every generation think “today’s” youth are unfit to move civilization along a positive path. My generation is no different, no wiser than the adults who thought so little of us. They claimed that modern society is doomed because of our “insane” love of rock & roll music, the jitterbug, pegged pants, weird hair styles and disrespectful attitudes. We were exactly like the kids we now so vocally criticize today. And, we are now, exactly like the old fogies who once criticized us. Ironic, is it not? Life goes full circle and us old coots are headed for the end of our 360-degree loop. How will the world survive without us?

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June 6, 2018 Article

The Old Coot is time challenged.

By Merlin Lessler

We had some people over for dinner a few weeks ago. When you throw a bash, a party or whatever, the big question is, “When will they arrive?” Or the reverse, when you’re invited to someone else’s house, “When should we get there?” Not on time! That’s for sure. It’s rude? Or is it? We all struggle with the issue. The time issue. If you’ve ever arrived right on the button, you know how awkward it is. The hosts are unprepared. Still running around finishing preparations and then disappearing to take a shower and change their clothes. You sit there by yourself, feeling like an idiot. You only do this once, after that you make sure you’re fifteen minutes late, at a minimum.

And, how about the people who invite you over at six, but don’t serve dinner until eight. You came hungry and your growling stomach keeps interrupting the conversation. The whole “what time to get there” thing creates a lot of unnecessary anxiety, for both sides of the invitation. Maybe it’s time to fix it. Make the invitation honest. “You are invited for a picnic. We’ll try to be ready for your arrival at five, but make sure you don’t come until five-fifteen, just in case we fall behind. Don’t come later than five-thirty; we’ll start to wonder if you are coming at all and won’t get the burgers going, causing early bird-Jim’s stomach to start dominating the patio discussion.

All that’s great, except old coots like me are “on-time” fanatics. We don’t want to be late. For anything! I don’t know why we get this way. Even those of us who never made it on time to anything when we were younger, shift gears when we get that first Social Security check. Maybe, it’s because time is running out, and we now realize it and don’t want to waste it. You can spot us parked outside stores, restaurants, banks and medical centers waiting for the place to open. It’s why the “early bird special” was invented. Restaurants got sick and tired of seeing a bunch of full size, four-door sedans clogging their parking lots with the left signal blinking, an hour before opening time. So, they let us in, in hopes we’d be gone by the time their regular customers arrived. A-la, the early bird special. They didn’t even need to lower the price.

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May 30, 2018 Article

The Old Coot has a near miss.

By Merlin Lessler

I backed over my neighbors the other night. ALMOST! I’d just” high fived” myself for spotting a jogger running along on the sidewalk and stopping before I hit him. I waited a minute for the adrenalin rush to subside and started backing up again, first checking and rechecking my rearview and side mirrors. I planned to stop at the edge of the sidewalk to make sure no one else was coming down the sidewalk. I guess I pulled slightly into the sidewalk space when I stopped. I heard a loud yell, “Watch out old man! You almost ran us over,” and then saw an arm raise in the air in an arc. I’d seen that curved extended arm gesture before, and immediately knew it was my neighbor Daren (who also answers to Daryl) and his wife Cindy. They were laughing; my heart was pounding.

They waved, laughed again and moved on. I got my heart under control and continued into the street and on my way, rehearsing the alibi I would have used if I actually did run them over. “Officer, I saw a guy running like crazy down the sidewalk when I was backing out of my driveway. He came by so fast, I almost ran over him.  After he passed by, I sped my car toward the street to see who was chasing him, accidently backing over the two thugs he was fleeing. It turned out they were my neighbors, taking a late-night stroll.”

Fortunately, I didn’t need the alibi. I hadn’t hit them, but I impressed myself how quick the lie came to me. I still had it! That split second mental process to explain a foible. It’s an essential skill for old coots. We stumble into awkward situations all the time - trying to get into the wrong car in a parking lot and kicking the door because it won’t open - spending the day with our shirt on inside out, claiming it’s the new style – accusing people of hiding our glasses while walking around with them perched on top our heads. Not to mention (why do we use that phrase, just before we go on to mention what we’re not going to mention?) Not to mention our habit of driving with one of our turn signals blinking endlessly. Which, had I been doing so, would have given Daren and Cindy plenty of warning to stay back. It easy to see now; the whole incident was their fault.

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