End of discussion. April 24, 2019 Article

An Old Coot can kill a conversation.

By Merlin Lessler

An internal GPS mechanism in your body turns on and begins to urge you to a warmer climate when you get your first Social Security check (Of course, you don’t get an actual check; you get an invisible deposit to your bank account, but the effect is the same.) Some people are strong; they resist the pull, but not me. I migrate with a flock of snowbirds to Florida when frigid weather comes to town. It doesn’t matter where you go: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona or some other warm place, you end up surrounded by people just like me. OLD!

My wife, Marcia, and I stay at a small place on the ocean with an eclectic group of snow birds. (Don’t fret; we did it on the cheap!) It’s like being with family after all these years together. We gather on the pool deck at 4 pm. Some call it cocktail hour, others say its high tea, but no matter your beverage of choice, there is always a clump of us hanging out at the appointed hour. Early in the season, the conversation is about the perils encountered on the journey south: snow drifts in Ohio, fog in the hills of Pennsylvania, traffic jams on Route 95. That sort of thing.

Travel talk is soon replaced with “medical” talk. I look forward to this phase; I learn more about the human body than a medical student taking an Anatomy & Physiology Class. Need advice on rotator cuffs – ACL and other knee issues - hip replacement complications - heart stents - urinary and digestive track problems - gall stones - foot neuropathy? This is the place to get it. Everyday topics, like weather in Florida versus weather back home, high and low tide times, rockets scheduled for launch at Cape Canaveral are covered as well.

Every possible topic is eventually covered and discarded. It got so bad this year we ended the season in a discussion on underwear. Men’s underwear to be specific. I have no idea, who, or how, it got going; I wasn’t paying attention; I’d drifted off in a mental journey back in time, but my attention came to life when Phyllis commented about someone who had 22 pairs of jockey shorts. “Twenty-two!” I yelled, coming out of my stupor. “That’s not enough to get through a month without doing a wash! Ha, Ha”

From there, the conversation took on a life of its own. Someone, it must have been Phyllis again, said, “I saw George in the laundry room folding his wash, but not his Jockeys; he just threw them in a pile. After he saw me doing a double fold of Keith’s underwear, he started folding his. But, only in a single fold.” A folding discussion, pros and cons, ensued until someone commented that “Rick” (who was back home in Massachusetts by then, and not there to defend himself) rolls his. He rolls everything, T-shirts, shorts, socks, etc. On and on went the conversation, until someone brought up the subject of men’s thongs. That’s when someone jumped up (probably me), and yelled, “What are we doing here? Men’s underwear, now thongs? Please, can we just move on?” But we couldn’t. We had nothing left to talk about. We sat there in silence, sipping our drinks, feeling depleted. I wonder what’s left to talk about next year?

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Old Coot needs a rotation to sleep well. April 17, 2019

The Old Coot needs a good turn.

By Merlin Lessler

There is so much to learn about getting old – almost as much as it takes to get from childhood to adulthood. The hardest part, and often the last truth to be accepted, is that you made it. You really are old! It takes a lot of evidence before it sinks in, to admit that your whole darn body is falling apart. Vast sections of your brain too.

It’s a 40 to 50-year process, starting as early as your 30’s; you try to duplicate a teenage stunt, like hopping over a parking meter, something you might have done with ease when you were eighteen, but now find your attempt has you walking funny, sporting a skinned elbow, a twisted knee and a bright red face.

This sort of thing happens again and again as you speed through time – you can’t eat two Big Macs before bedtime without getting a stomach ache – you catch the football your ten-year-old granddaughter threw to you but you can’t get it all the way back to her. The list is endless, yet denial of the aging process holds fast. Eventually, the real deal (the truth) hits home. I had two new eye openers this year. I tossed a baseball in the air and tried to hit it with a bat, something I could do with my eyes closed when I was a kid. Not anymore! Fifteen tries; fifteen misses. Then, I tried to skip a rope, thinking I could do it for time on end. It took a half dozen attempts before I managed to jump over it just once. I finally made it to ten and had to quit. I was exhausted and on the brink of toppling over.  

Wake up calls like that prove your declining physicality are just part of the picture. There are also the mental lapses that become all too commonplace. Like, the day you realize your two most frequent sentences are, “What’s that guy’s name?” and What did I come into the kitchen for?” They just keep coming, those physical and mental bits of evidence. I added a new one when I rode a horse last fall for half an hour and ended up with a blister at the bottom of my spine. A week or two later, my old friend, Arthur-itis, came for a visit and moved into the middle joint of my left index finger. No big deal, I thought, I’m right handed. Until I discovered I needed this finger to open jars and bottles, especially the twist caps on beer and soda containers. I had to ask my niece, Ashley, to do it for me at last year’s family Christmas Eve party.

I’m on a new quest now; I need a human rotisserie for my bed. When I sleep in my favorite position (on my side) my shoulder and hip ache after an hour and wake me up. I’m forced to rotate to a new position. Corporate innovators could make a lot of money if they would shift a little of their focus away from self-driving cars, drones, video games and phone Apps, and start working on the geriatric population’s needs. There are 44 million people of my age group in the country. Many have the same need for a bed rotisserie as me. It’s a big market. I’d do it myself, but first I need to get a good night’s sleep.

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I drive defective cars. - April 10, 2019 Article

The Old Coot drives defective cars.

By Merlin Lessler

My wife and I own two defective cars. They both have the same defect - NO HOOD ORNAMENT. One, has an additional defect - NO HOOD. At least not that you can see when you’re behind the wheel. The view out the windshield is like back in the day when I chugged around in a Volkswagen Bus. In that case, there really wasn’t a front hood. It was a straight line from the roof to the road. Today’s cars, SUV’s mostly, and ours in particular, give you the same view out the windshield as my old VW Bus. You can’t tell how far the car extends in front of you, which is quite disconcerting when you are pulling up to an immovable object or into a space in a parking lot. It’s why you see so many cars parked in an off-kilter fashion, front to back, in most store lots.

Hood ornaments are (if we had one) essential to driving safely. So are strong, chrome plated metal bumpers, but today’s cars don’t have either. I miss the hood ornament the most. Not because of the decorative aspect, and many were quite distinctive, like that on a Jaguar, a cat crouched in a running stance. When I learned to drive, you looked out the windshield and aligned the hood ornament with the edge of the road. It assured you were properly placed in your lane. Highways back then were primarily two-lane roads; it was essential that your car be aligned in the center of its lane and not wandering off toward oncoming traffic. The speed limit was 50 MPH, but the force of an impact with a car coming at you is additive. If both of them are doing fifty, the collision is equivalent to driving into a cement wall at 100 MPH. (The sum of the speed of each car.)

I guess I shouldn’t worry about it. Tesla, Google and most auto makers are working on cars that drive themselves. In some cases, the vehicle keeps an eye on the white markings along the edge of the lane to keep the car where it should be. Of course, a world where the roads are kept in good repair with perfectly clear lane lines doesn’t exist, so extra cameras, sensors and on-board computer intelligence has to compensate for the lack of acceptable lane markings. They’re getting it figured out, but they estimate it will raise the price of a self-driving car by $4,000. That will give me more substantial to complain about than a missing hood ornament.

Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail, or text to 607-972-6102

Cheapskate old coot wants credit for tips. April 3, 2019

The Old Coot wants “tip” credit.

By Merlin Lessler

You get in line at the counter in a coffee shop, a deli or a pizza parlor; the first thing you notice is the tip jar next to the register. The pressure is on! To tip, or not to tip? That is the question. And if so, how much? Now mind you, the clerk is just going to take your order and payment, and at most, fill a container with coffee and hand it to you. A process that takes less than a minute. Is a tip really appropriate? It’s not like in a restaurant or at a bar where the server spends time and effort to keep you happy, running back and forth bringing dinner and drinks to you and enduring your small talk and world view philosophy, while standing there hoping you shut up before their head explodes. That customer service activity deserves a tip, pegged at 20% by today’s social norm. (It was 10% fifty years ago, 15% twenty-five years ago and now has reached the 20% level. An entirely different issue for another day.)

So now, you’re back at the counter; the server took your cash and handed you a cup of coffee. A tip? How much? The pressure is debilitating for us old coots, cheapskates by nature. It’s because the price of everything is so high compared to our multiple decade reference point, starting when we were kids, buying a full-size Snicker bar for five cents. It costs well over a dollar. But, back to the subject at hand - the clerk rings up a small coffee on the register, $2.08. The register in your head taps your memory and rings up 10 cents. Ouch! It physically hurts to hand over that much money for a cup of coffee. It feels like a ransom payment. It’s why we’re so CHEAP (price conscious is what I call it).

So, we take our coffee, stiff the clerk, feel guilty and slink out of the building. But, if it’s a place we go to frequently and are welcomed by name and asked, “The usual”? Then it’s a different matter. We tip, but not every time. We wait until the clerk can see us stuff a bill into the tip jar or is close enough to a quarter or two rattle in the jar. We want credit for our generosity. It’s generosity because we don’t feel a tip is necessary for such a small amount of effort. It’s the tip jar that forces our hand.

Regular people, I notice, don’t bother to get credit for their tip; they stuff the jar even when the clerk has their back to them. These are people who paid a dollar for a Snicker bar when they were growing up, not the 5 cents I paid. These are also the people who think I’m lying when I tell them a pizza (a whole, eight slice pizza) was a dollar when I was a teenager. They can continue to tip without it being noticed, but NOT ME! I want credit for it. That’s the way it is for a cheapskate. How about you?

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

The Old Coot is "greeting" challenged. March 27, 2019

The Old Coot is greeting challenged.

By Merlin Lessler

How are you? How are you doing? How have you been? What’s new? What’s up? This is how we great each other. Sometimes we keep it simple and say, “Hi!” or “Hello there.” But for the most part, we stick with the commonly used “Howdy-Dos.” The only new one to come along, as far as I know, is, “SUP,” but it’s mostly used by young people.

Our responses to standard greetings are worn out too: “Good” – “Not bad” – “Same-O, Same-O” – “Same stuff, different day” – “Living the dream” and the like. Or, we get creative and upbeat every once in a while, and say, “Great!” – “Excellent!” – “Fantastic!” But, the receivers of these upbeat responses don’t buy it. Under their breath they are saying, “Bull!” or “Get real; your life’s a mess.”

It gets old, this greeting and response routine. It needs new life.  Maybe some reality too. Don’t ask me though; I don’t know what to say in greeting or in response. Lately, I’ve been swapping greetings between, “Hey John, how are you doing?” (using the person’s name to prove I’m not senile and hoping to heck I get it right.) And “SUP?” (With a smile, that is meant to mock the word.) My responses are lame too, I vacillate between – “Good.” (Spoken with an upbeat tone) and “Great!” hoping firstly, it might be true, and secondly, it will be believed. Social greeting habits do change and evolve over time. When was the last time you heard, “Look what the cat dragged in!” – “What’s the good word?” – “Long time no see!” – “Hey man!”

This whole thing, our social greeting tradition, was a lot easier a century or so ago when society was more formal. Men tipped (doffed) their hats or simply said, “Greetings.” I heard a new one from Ray Moran, former owner of “What’s your Beef” in Binghamton, NY. I said, “Hi Ray, how are you doing?” He replied, “Everything is cooperating today.” I knew exactly what he meant, any old guy would. He was saying a lot, just using four words - “My back doesn’t ache too bad today - Both of my knees are bending without too much cracking - My left shoulder is moveable - My stiff neck feels good enough for me to look to my left when I turn right on red (without having to stop.” I’m going to start using Ray’s response, even though it will be as big a lie as when I say, “Fantastic!”

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