The Old Coot Counts to ten in the pool. Published 1/21/26 in Owego NY

 The Old Coot counts to ten.

By Merlin Lessler

My friend Wesley came laughing into our coffee klatch the other morning. He had been in a store where his purchases came to $10.06. He gave the teenage clerk a twenty dollar bill, a nickel and a penny. A puzzled look crossed her face. She froze, as though in a catatonic state. After a few seconds, she snapped out of it, fumbled in the cash register drawer and handed him a five dollar bill, four ones, three quarters, a dime, a nickel and four pennies, and left the six cents Wesley had originally handed her on the counter.

I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise. Kids grow up today with a series of electronic devices doing a lot of thinking for them. My generation is “Device Stupid.” We struggle to use them. We call their generation, “Common Sense Stupid.” It’s important for us to mix with each other. We can both learn to be less stupid.

When I swim laps in the YMCA pool, I count lengths by reciting, “One two, buckle my shoe, three four shut the door,” on and on with the counting rhyme. When I finish with, “Nine ten, the big fat hen,” I switch from the crawl stroke to the back stroke. I do this over and over for about thirty-minutes.

I wondered if kids today still learn to count using the “One two - buckle my shoe” method. I asked around and apparently they do, even though the rhyme is out of date. Its origin goes back to the 1780’s, when shoes were fastened with a buckle. The industrial revolution in the mid 1800’s replaced the buckle method with metal eyelets and shoe laces. I grew up with laces, but it was much harder to learn to tie, than it was to learn to count. My son grew up with Velcro. Kind of like the old buckle. Now, you don’t have to tie at all. Slip-on shoes and Velcro have entirely changed the shoe landscape.

Terms like, dial a phone, turn a screw counterclockwise to tighten, tick-tock goes a clock and a slew of others commonly used by my crowd are as out of date as buckle shoes, but we still use them, and chuckle when a youngster has no idea what we’re talking about. We probably need to do more teaching and less chuckling, but gosh the chuckling is so much fun.   

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The Old Coot rides it out. - Published 01/13/2023 in Owego, NY

 The Old Coot takes a ride.

By Merlin Lessler

You don’t have time to meditate? Or lay on a couch in a therapist’s office? Then do it the old coot way, take a ride in your car (after the sun comes up) on a Saturday, Sunday or a holiday morning. Go alone; turn the radio off and go exploring to nearby areas, but places you’ve never been.  Learn about your surroundings; put a new map in your head; get rural if you can; go slower than you normally would and look around. Really see what this other world is really all about. 

I find it fun to contrast how wealth is displayed in so called upper class areas versus middle income, poor and rural areas. In wealthy areas it’s all about the house: big, fancy, extensive landscaping,. Often jammed together on small lots. Rural is different. People live in moderate sized houses with huge yards. It is amazing how many hours of mowing it must take to keep up with it. But mowing isn’t really a chore, it’s another form of meditation; you are all alone, doing something monotonous, so your mind wanders and digs out stuff and helps you solve your problems. Just like this “Sunday” drive I’m suggesting you do every once in a while.

The thing I like most about rural areas, aside from the huge mown lawns, is the people who show their wealth by filling up their acreage with old, decaying cars and tractors, discarded household appliances, farm equipment, rusty swing sets. You name it; if it doesn’t work or look good anymore, you will find it there. Some people think this is ugly, but you can see it as beautiful; it is like modern art that appears to be blobs of paint, but draws you in to find the beauty if you lose yourself when viewing it.

You never come home from one of these rides without being entertained and changed a little bit. But, most of all, a little more relaxed, calmed and mentally healthier. Happy Riding!

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The Old Coot hears a bird call. Published in NY and elsewhere 01/06/2026

 The Old Coot is a birder?

By Merlin Lessler

There was a bird on a rooftop across the street from me in Florida yelling, “Blow-Ah, Blow-Ah.” It was a call I’d never heard before. It looked like a crow, but I know what a crow sounds like and that wasn’t it. I should know, after all, Cornell Ornithology Laboratory has a free bird identifying App that is named Merlin, just like me. I have the App on my phone; I use it quite often, like when I’m sitting on the porch. I use the “bird sound” function to call birds in the vicinity to come to me. I pick one of several mating calls and soon enough, a bird flies over, but quickly figures out that I’m not a proper mate and flies off to tell their friends to stay away; it’s just an Old Coot calling, not the Coot Bird. (Coots are dark, chicken like waterbirds)

It is a fun thing to do, but it can get out of hand, as it did one evening at our friends, Paul and Carol’s house in the early evening while we were sitting in their lanai at the back of their home. Carol said a lonely screech owl flew over and sat on the fence next to where we were sitting. It was quite regular; it came every night.  Just one owl, all by itself. She thought it was the only one around. I pulled out my “Merlin App” and scrolled down to the screech owl section and tapped on one of several available calls.

 It didn’t take long. First one owl came by, then another and then another. One flew into the screen around the lanai, then did it again. Being the jerk that I am, I’d overdone it. A single screech from Carol, not the owl, got me to shut the thing off. I felt the same fright as she did; it was like being in the Alfred Hitchock movie, “The Birds,” where the whole town was trapped in their houses by angry swarms of birds that attacked and tried to kill anyone who ventured out the door.

Anyhow, back to the bird that was chirping, “Blow-ah.” It flew off before I could get the Merlin bird ID” App going to identify what it was. I tried artificial intelligence on Google; It wasn’t sure, but thought it might be a “Fish-Crow,” and then suggested I install the Merlin Bird ID App. It didn’t say it, but I could sense it thought it was appropriate for me, since I’m a bird brain.

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The Old Coot's best Christmas present, 1949 - Published in NY papers

 An old coot remembers his best Christmas present ever.

 By Merlin Lessler

 It happened when I was seven, the best Christmas present a kid (in the fifties) could hope for, was under the tree. A bicycle! My sister, Madeline, and I both got bikes that year, second-hand, but freshened up with a new coat of paint. We didn’t care; they sparkled, as did our eyes when we saw them under the tree. But, into the basement they went, to wait for Spring to arrive.      

 Finally, the first robin arrived and the bikes came out. We lived on a hill; it was steep and a terrible place to learn how to ride. My father helped me push it up to a flat street at the top of our hill that hardly had any traffic on it. I still remember the exhilaration of staying upright while he pushed me. I remember even more vividly, the terror I felt when I looked over my shoulder and discovered he wasn’t there. I panicked and crashed to the ground. He eventually convinced me that I’d kept the bike upright all by myself and didn’t need his help, except to get started. I hopped back on, and like Hop-a-long Cassidy, my cowboy hero, rode off into the sunset. One problem; I didn't know how to dismount. When I came to a stop, I simply fell over.  

 My sister solved the problem. She raced ahead, jumped off her bike and caught me as I came to a stop. Later on, I just stopped near a curb and put out my foot so I could climb off. It wasn’t my fault; the bike was too big, like everything in those days. We had to “grow into” stuff: shoes, clothes, skates, sleds and yes, bikes. I went around in oversized jeans (we called them dungarees) with a six inch cuff, shoes with wadded up newspaper stuffed in the toes and to top it off, I had to use a curb to get on and off my bike. Now that I’m in my 80’s, I still use a curb when one is available.   

 I developed a deep relationship with that two-wheeler. I don't think a cowboy ever loved his horse more than I loved that bike. It was freedom; it was status; and it taught me how to fix things. I learned to take it apart and convert it into a racing bike, by removing the fenders, reversing the handlebars and raising the seat. Sometimes, I decorated it with red, white and blue crepe paper and rode at the tail end of Memorial Day and Fourth of July parades. A lot of kids did. We also “clothes pinned” a piece of cardboard to the fender support so it would flap against the spokes and made it sound like we were riding a motorcycle. It didn’t take much to entertain a kid back in the fifties.    

 When I turned 12, I found a lightweight, English bike, with hand brakes and three gears under the tree. It was brand-new and the exact right size. I was ecstatic, but I’ll always think of that used, repainted first bicycle as the best Christmas present ever. I hope your Christmas was as merry as mine was back then.