The Old Coot has sixty kids (May 22, 2019 Article)

The Old Coot has sixty kids?

By Merlin Lessler

I'm an old coot; my children are grown out in the world, and every so often I find myself ruminating in my head, or looking through a stack of old pictures, wondering how that time with them could have passed so fast. It’s the kind of wool gathering that brings ones mortality into sharp focus. This isn’t something new for me, this ruminating; I did it at each passage in each of their lives: bringing them home from the hospital as a newborn – hearing their first utterance of Da Da – witnessing their first time sitting up, crawling, standing, walking, getting a tooth, off to school, teenage-hood, driver’s license, high school graduation, college and on and on and on. And, through all of it, I was aghast at the warp speed that time uncoiled. So, “BIG DEAL,” you say, “Everyone has encounters with, and surprise at, how fast time flies by, how fast life flies by. 

Well, here’s the big deal, if you have kids of your own, or you are an aunt or uncle, or just were able to watch neighborhood kids grow up, you get to see them in many variations: baby, toddler, kindergartner, teenager, young adult and off into the world for additional transformations. But they just get to see you (us) in an unvaried state – an adult. That’s what we’ve been all their lives. Even when the kids were little and I was in my twenty’s and thirty’s, I was the old man, their old man. Every father, mother, aunt, uncle, and neighbor is an oldster to them as well. If you're twenty, thirty, forty (which is young from an old coot perspective), that’s old to a kid.

We’re lucky; we get to observe all their different “person-hoods” as they grow up. Just look at a few old pictures and you will see what I mean. They really are different people as they move through the passages of life. It’s sort of a rebirth, every few years. Their underlying traits show through, but they’ve become new people with each passage. I was lucky enough to co-parent six children and to know each of them as 10 different people. That’s 60 people I have a history with. But they’re stuck with just one of me – “the old man.” Figuratively back then, literally now.

The next time I’m in the doctor’s office and am asked if I know what month it is (and my answer is two months off) or who the president is (and I say, Bill Clinton.) I might get a pass since I at least knew the name of a month and the name of a president, but if I was asked how many children I had, and I said, “Sixty,” it would be the loony bin for me. I don’t care; it’s the truth. And, I have the pictures to prove it.

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Old Coot has many, many dogs. (May 15, 2019 Article)

The Old Coot has gone to the dogs.

By Merlin Lessler

I visited the dog park at Hickories Park the other day. I’ve been going to the main part of the park since 1986, to jog, walk, picnic, X-country ski, read and doze in my canvas bag chair, to rest after padding from the Village in my kayak and once a year to the Rotary Picnic. I was also there to watch my son’s soccer games, hit golf balls and visit friends in the camp grounds. But, never to the dog park! Hickories Park is the greatest public asset in our town. And now, the dog park makes it even better.

The entire park was a dog park when I first started going there. Our little cocker spaniel, Jezebel, loved to run free when no people were around. She’d like it even better now if she were still alive. To run free with other dogs and never fear the arrival of the dog warden.

We don’t have a dog these days; the circumstances of our lives at present isn’t compatible with dog ownership. Darn it! But I found out I don’t need a dog of my own, the people with dogs let you enjoy theirs at the dog park. Actually, it’s not the people who allow it; it’s the dogs themselves that roam free and stop by for a head rub. It’s so nice to sit on a bench or walk along the path surrounded by dogs running free, chasing each other in a game of tag, establishing the pecking order when new arrivals come to join the pack and doing all the things dogs do when allowed a little freedom.

No, I don’t have “a” dog these days; Instead, I have “dozens and dozens” of dogs, thanks to the dedicated volunteer members of ODOG, who created the dog park with a generous donation from Adam Weitsman. It’s a wonderful memorial to the memory of his sister, Rebecca, and her love of dogs. ODOG volunteers also help maintain the park and keep it user and dog friendly.

Don’t have a dog? Need a dog fix? Stop by and get your fill. And when the ODOG organization asks for help to sustain the place, give it some consideration. Any donation will be greatly appreciated and will get, and keep, a lot of tails wagging around town.

For more information about the dog park and ODOG (Owego Dog Owners Group), to become a volunteer or to donate financial support, you can visit their web site at – WWW.owegodogs.com

The Old Coot doesn't line up. (May 8, 2019 Article)

The Old Coot is out of line.

By Merlin Lessler

I was in a crowded deli the other day. It could have been a coffee house or a fast food restaurant, they are all about the same when a crowd shows up. Some give you a number or set up a rope barrier to guide you to the counter in an orderly fashion; some don’t. I like it when they don’t; I sit off to the side, sipping coffee and watching the show. I’m a student of the queue. Queue is a corporate word for line. CEO’s think we don’t mind waiting our turn if it’s in a queue, rather than a line. I love to watch people in line; it reveals so much about them. 

Lines wouldn’t be a problem if the fictitious “Soup Nazi” from the Seinfeld sitcom ran things. If you wanted soup from him, you conducted yourself by his rules: money in your left hand, step to the counter in one swift motion, speak your order clearly, quickly step sideways to the cashier, pay, keep your mouth shut, pick up your soup and leave. He would never allow the undisciplined, sprawling, disjointed lines that take place at delicatessens, fast food restaurants and other places that often have customers backed up in a mass of humanity.  

Some people who join a queue seem to have a psychological disorder, like the guy who keeps a four-foot distance between himself and the person in front of him. I guess it’s a phobia about bumping into another person. I hate being behind these guys. I’m afraid someone will come along and take the spot behind the person in front of him. It happens a lot.   

Fussy people with complicated orders are fun to watch – “I’d like a small coffee but put it in a “large” cup. I want it with two and 1/2 sugars, 1/2 sweet & low, 3 squirts of milk (not half & half), a cup of ice on the side and leave an inch between the coffee and the top of the cup. These people are painful to be stuck behind, but fun to watch when you’re just observing, almost as much fun as the people in Dunkin Donuts and other places who order in a zigzag fashion, giving the clerk a workout: a jelly from the lower right shelf, two steps over to a glazed on the upper left, three steps back for a plain in the next section. On and on they go, putting the poor clerk through an aerobic adventure and taking twice as long as they should. They do the same thing at a deli counter.  

The worst customer to get stuck behind is the one who doesn’t know what he wants. He’s waited in line facing a giant picture menu and has a panoramic view of the display cases, yet when the clerk asks, “How can I help you?” he gets a blank look on his face and replies, “I don’t know. What’s good?” The clerk starts rattling off suggestions; each is discarded; I don’t like jelly, I can’t eat chocolate, I have a bad tooth so I can’t chew a bagel. The game continues until he finally makes a selection. The clerk quickly throws it in a bag, hoping to get rid of him but it doesn’t work. Now, he changes his mind. “No, take this back. Give me the breakfast sandwich, but put the cheese on the bottom, don’t warm up the bagel, and make sure the egg is not too hot,” proving he knew what he wanted all along.

The list of queue performances is endless: customers on cell phones who have to discuss their selection with a friend - parents with four brats who insist the kids order for themselves but then veto their selections – absent minded shoppers who have to run back to their car where they left their wallet, low talkers, who order in a whisper and then get indignant when asked to repeat their selection. Queue watching is a pleasant pastime. You don’t even have to be an old coot to partake. All you have to do is pull up a chair or lean against the wall and watch the show.

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The hand rail surprised me. (May 1, 2019 Article)

The Old Coot is singing a new tune.

By Merlin Lessler

I noticed something the other day as I was walking down a set of stairs from a third floor to ground level. I’ve walked this same staircase for ten years or so. The thing I noticed, is that I was using the hand rail. I wondered how long I’d been doing that. I was almost sure I hot-footed it down, oftentimes two steps at a time. I suddenly realized that isn’t so; I go slow and use the hand rail.

Like most men, and all old coots, I don’t notice things, at least right away. Like the “new” curtains in our kitchen I commented on only to be informed they’d been there for several months. Or the “new” hanging plants on the porch that had gone from seedlings to full bloom. OK, that’s a flaw, not noticing things of that sort, but not noticing how I travel up and down a set of stairs? That takes the cake. Who would notice, if not me?

It got me thinking, this dealing with old age adventure that I’ve been on for nearly two decades. When I look back at the starting point, I laugh at myself for thinking I was old then. Hopefully in the future, I’ll feel the same thing as I look back to this moment and my use of a hand rail epiphany.

I started to take a little inventory to see what else I hadn’t noticed. I came up with several; I’ve stopped hopping around the room trying to get into a pair of pants, trying to avoid crashing into the sinks or the bathtub or the wall and putting myself in peril. I sit down to do it now; while I’m there, I slip on my shoes and socks. No sense bending and stretching to perform that chore.

My list is longer than I thought, but the real eye-opener was the number of strings on my guitar. I’d taken off the two lowest ones years ago; they add to the richness of a chord but aren’t essential. Now, I’m contemplating the removal of another string, because the index finger on my chord hand gets an attitude at times and won’t bend, preventing me from playing a chord that is essential in thousands of songs that can be played with just four chords. Three chords won’t do it; the only way I can get back to a four-chord level is to lose a string and play enough notes in that chord to “fake” it. I guess that’s what old age is all about, losing the music, one guitar string at a time. And then finding a new way to sing a happy tune.

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