August 13, 2014 Article

The Old Coot reveals a secret.

By Merlin Lessler

One of the burning questions across the country is, “What do old coots talk about when no one else is around?” It’s a well-guarded secret, but in the spirit of Edward Snowden’s release of the secret files at the N.S.A. I’ve decided it’s time to let the world in on the “old coot conversations.”

Old coots don’t talk about religion or politics. They learned those subjects are taboo from years of experience and conversations that ended in arguments, fistfights and loss of friendships. Besides, people believe what they believe and trying to talk them out of it is futile. Eventually, you learn this and keep your mouth shut.

Old coots talk about four things: ailments - how old we are - who dies - and what was that guy’s name. Ailments are an everyday topic. “My neck hurts. I can’t turn it to the right today.” – “My knee has been sore for a week.” – “ I had a leg cramp in the middle of the night, jumped out of bed to kick it out, stepped on the cat and sprained my wrist when I fell.” These are conversations I call “ailments lite.” Nothing serious, just common, everyday things that happen to old coots. It’s a way of finding out how serious something might be. You throw it out there in hopes that one of the group will say, “I had that. It goes away after a week or so.” Or, it could go the other way, “Get to the doctor as soon as you can. Charlie had the same thing and let it go. “May he rest in peace.” Us old guys know. As a group we’ve had everything and are better equipped than an emergency room at figuring out what you have and how to proceed. It’s old coot triage.

How old we are - is one of our favorite topics. We can’t talk about it enough. We just can’t believe it! A couple of years ago we were complaining about turning thirty and now we’re sitting around in clothes older than that, not believing we’ve been retired for 10, 20, or 30 years. We also do it to fish for compliments. A guy will say, “I’m 68!” We’ll say, “Wow, you don’t look a day over fifty.” And, hope he’ll do the same when we tell him we’re seventy-one. We know it’s a lie, but it still feels good to hear it.

Who died - is always coming up. My crowd is in that phase of life. “John Doe died last week,” one of us will report. Then the discussion ensues to find a reason why he left the building so early and why we won’t do the same. “Did he still smoke?” – “He never did lose that beer gut like his doctor told him to.” – “I told him, and told him, he needed to get out and walk more, move around.” We loved John Doe, but still, we have to figure out that it’s his fault and we are exempt from his fate.

What’s his name -  doesn’t usually start out to be a topic in and of itself. It’s an offshoot from one of the three other topics. “Joe what’s his name had that sore neck thing you have. You know, the guy who used to live over by the guy from IBM next to the drug store. The conversation just skipped from one name to three. In trying to get it resolved, several more nameless people pop into the conversation. When it reaches a fever pitch we call it a day. Our brains over heat. We take our stiff necks, sore knees and sprained wrists and go home. The rest of the day is spent racking our brains to come up with one of the missing person’s names so we can call or text the other guys and let them know we’re not as senile as they are. If we could only remember where we put the phone!

August 6, 2014 Article

The Old Coot has a one-arm day.

By Merlin Lessler

I’ve thought about doing this for quite some time. To see if I could get through a day with one arm. My left one (I’m a righty). Too much time on my hands? Maybe? But, when you’re an old coot like me, you never know when you will have to adapt to yet another physical limitation. So many things can disable your good arm: a fall, a stroke, arthritis, or just numbing it out for the day by sleeping on it.

Last Tuesday, I decided, “Today is the day!” Getting dressed was a surprise, not as hard as I expected. My shirt was on and buttoned in less than a minute. Pants were another matter. I couldn’t get them on and buttoned until I lay down on the floor. I was off to a good start. Then, I cheated; I slipped into a pair of loafers instead of shoes that needed to be tied. I stuck my right hand in my pocket and set out to face the day with one arm. “Call me Lefty!”

I’ve done a few things left-handed over the years. The Saturday crossword puzzle for example. It takes longer, but I can eventually fill in the letters in readable fashion. Saturday’s puzzle is the hardest of the week so I have a lot fewer spaces to fill in than normal. But still, I do it. I also try to eat European style every once in a while, with a fork in my left hand, the knife in my right, and no switching back and forth. I usually make out all right, except when I stab my lip with the fork. I thought my experiment was going reasonably well until I nearly put my eye out brushing my teeth. I didn’t fare much better splashing water on my face and combing my hair, but that’s not a problem for an old coot. People don’t expect much when it comes to my appearance. Breakfast was a breeze; I didn’t end up with any more milk and cereal clinging to my shirt than normal. I did have a problem buttering a piece of toast; it kept skidding off the plate.

After breakfast, I left the house and headed for my car. I was positive I’d be able to drive with one arm. After all, I set the knee driving record in 1959, steering my father’s Edsel with my knees from Binghamton to Quaker Lake. But, I was wrong. I could barely start the engine. I had to slide over to the passenger seat to insert the key in the slot in the steering wheel. Now I know how lefties feel in a world designed for righties. I mowed the lawn, but it took some acrobatics to hold the “dead man’s” switch in place with my hip so I could get it started. Luckily, the mower had gas in the tank. I don’t believe a one-armed person can put gas in a mower using today’s gas cans with that complicated, spring-loaded doohickey at the end of the filler neck.

Then, I decided to take a bike ride.  I do that one-handed all the time. That’s when my one-armed day came to an end. I squeezed the left brake handle in a panic and nearly flew over the handlebars. The left hand brake lever connects to the front brake. You should never use just the front brake for a sudden stop. My one arm day had some successes, but over all it was a failure. I gained a new appreciation for the four limbs I have, even if they only function at an old coot level. I learned how lucky I am. You might want to try it sometime. (Just make sure your insurance is paid up.) 

July 30, 2014 Article

The Old Coot takes an English lesson.

By Merlin Lessler

A new term has entered our language, “Hash Tag.” It’s a “Twitter” thing. The # symbol is now called a hash tag. I grew up with it being the number sign. As in, “Sit up straight at your desk, open the Iowa Test folder, take out a #2 pencil and fill in the circles that you think are the correct answers to the questions.” That nomenclature stayed true for many, many decades. Then, along came automated phone answering systems at corporate call centers. “If you are calling about a problem with your bill, press one, followed by the pound key!”

“Pound key?” I didn’t know what it was and hung up. For a year or more I was closed off from the corporate world, not able to lodge a complaint. That pent up frustration resulted in my present condition: old-coot-itis, an incurable senior ailment. Finally, a teenage genius explained that # was the symbol for pound. If I pushed the phone key with that symbol on it I’d get through the queue. Of course he followed the explanation with an eye roll and a loud, “DUH!” I didn’t bother to explain that the phone I’d been calling on didn’t have any buttons; it was a dial phone with finger holes. Nor, did I mention that I used “lb” when I meant pound. I didn’t want to risk another eye roll. At least I was up to date. I knew that the # symbol had two meanings. Three, if I thought about the sheet music I’d read when playing my French horn in the junior high school band (now, middle school) and # meant the note to play was a sharp.

Of course it’s not that simple; it never is. If you are a miner or work in that industry, # means shaft. As in, we found a new vein in # (shaft) 4. Or, if you work in public relations, three #s in a row means, “End of press release.” Put it after a move in a chess by mail game and it means, “Checkmate!” Now it has a new name and a new meaning, Hash Tag! It’s used to mark key words or topics in a Tweet. Twitter users created it as a way to categorize and sort messages. People place a # symbol before a word or phrase in their Tweet, so it can be found when someone does a search for what people said on that topic.

That’s all I know about it. I’m not a Tweeter. I guess I need to find that teenager who explained the pound sign to me and have him explain why I might want to hop on the Twitter bandwagon. Why I might want to swamp my phone with messages from celebrities, politicians, businesses and other entities (with too much time on their hands). He’ll probably end his sales pitch with another eye roll, followed by a, “DUH!” But, this time I’ll be ready. I’ll just tell him to get his hash tag out of town.  

July 23, 2014 Article

The Old Coot explains the law of “leaving half.”

By Merlin Lessler

It was the law! Back in the 1950’s. In my house, anyway. We called it the “Law of one-half.” You went to the fridge (which wasn’t called that back then; icebox maybe, but never fridge; it was simply, the refrigerator!). Anyhow, using correct modern lingo, when you went to the fridge to get some milk, or on the rare occasion when a quart bottle (the week’s supply) of soft drink (now called soda) still resided there, you had to limit your consumption. The most you could take was half. “Leave some for the next person!” The law applied to all consumables: potato chips, cookies, everything! If the Charles Chips can or the Wise chip bag had six chips left; you could only take three, just in case someone came along with a strong lust for a greasy potato chip, at least they would find something, even if it was only a small something, to sate their desire. Sometimes it got pretty complicated. “What if the bag contained a single chip and a few crumbs? Do I break it in half, or eat it all and destroy the evidence?” Usually we followed the rule, left half a chip and some of the crumbs.

It was a bad rule! We ended up with a “fridge” loaded with nearly empty containers and a cupboard full of cereal boxes, potato chip bags and cracker tins containing nothing but crumbs. Mom was the official executioner; she threw out the tired packages when no one was looking. It was her “leave half” rule; she didn’t want any witnesses when she broke it. 

The rule didn’t apply to Kool-Aid. A different principal came into play there. When the jug got below half we added water to replace the amount we drank. The Kool-Aid got weaker and weaker, but as long as it had some color and a hint of flavor, we kept it going. We had too. We were only allowed two batches a week, unless a bad stretch of hot muggy weather came to town and running through the sprinkler in the backyard wasn’t enough to cool us off.

I recently found that the “leave-one-half rule” doesn’t apply to college students sharing quarters. Just the opposite. I stumbled on it when I visited my son’s apartment at SUNY Plattsburgh, an apartment he shared with four other students. Their rule was: “whatever you put in the fridge or the cupboard is fair game.” Eat or drink it now, or forever hold your peace! A secondary rule was also in play; if you left a small amount in a beverage container, you didn’t have to put it in the garbage. The “fridge” ended up crowded with juice, milk, soda and other bottles with a sixteenth of an inch of liquid in the bottom. Now he’s back home and I can’t figure out which rules apply. Until I do, I’m hiding my emergency Snicker’s bar. I can’t risk finding it half gone, or all gone, in the middle of the night when I’m hit with a Snicker’s attack. (The leave half-rule doesn’t apply to Snickers)

July 16, 2014 Article

The Old Coot drinks “old man” coffee.

By Merlin Lessler

“Old man” coffee! That’s what I order when I step to the counter at Dunkin Donuts and other places that offer a senior citizen discount. I don’t like the “senior citizen” term. It sounds contrived to me, something that social scientists came up with in a never-ending effort to classify us, to break us up into groups in order to explain our behavior. I resent the label. Call me anything, but don’t call me senior citizen. It’s a group I swore I’d never join, back when I was in my twenties and thirties and thought I’d never get old. Now that I’ve reached, heck, exceeded, the age at which the senior citizen label is assigned, I still don’t want that label. I’m an old man! Call me an old man. Or, if you want to be more accurate, call me an old coot.

I find I’m not alone in my opinion about the “senior citizen” term. A survey of Baby Boomers was aired on PBS the other day. Baby Boomers are the generation right behind mine. They don’t want to be referred to as senior citizens either. I don’t know what they would like to be called, the survey didn’t say. But, I bet they don’t want to be called anything. It’s bad enough that social scientists have labeled each generation with insulting and awkward terms: Silent (my crowd), Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millenial, and then add to the insult by labeling people “Senior Citizens” the day they turn 65. Sociologists and marketing specialists put us into groups and claim they can predict how we think, what we will buy and who we’ll vote for. It’s insulting. 

We think of ourselves as individuals. I’m comfortable with the old coot label. It fits, but it’s hard to assign a list of characteristics to it. We’re not a homogeneous group, except for the trait of being contrary. Otherwise, we’re a mixed bag. Some of us may seem almost youthful one minute, tottering and stodgy the next. We might be set in our ways on Monday and turn around and seem to be open minded and liberal on Tuesday. The key word is “seem”. Old coots are never exactly as they appear.  

So, I order old man coffee and get a discount. But, I’m ashamed of myself. For years I preached against the concept of a senior citizen discount. Why should someone get a break in price just because they are a certain age? It never made sense to me. It was one of those marketing ploys that big business came up with in the 1970’s; to make the public think they were compassionate and generous. Now, they are stuck with it. They can’t figure out how to end it without a big backlash. It didn’t cost them much when they started it. Seniors back then had more character than we do today. Those elders rarely accepted senior citizen discounts. They didn’t want charity or a handout.

But that changed over the years and now old coots like me, who go around thinking we have principles, look on it as an entitlement. I’ve been corrupted! If you see me step to the counter and order an old man coffee, wag your finger at me and say, “Shame on you.” Maybe I’ll wake up and realize what I’m doing. Maybe all of us old guys will. If we do, the price of coffee will go down for everyone else. 

July 9, 2014 Article

The Old Coot wonders when guns got so heavy.

By Merlin Lessler

I’ve got to get this out of my system. No, it’s not another rant about the Weather Service squawk blasting from my TV, usually at a critical juncture in a high drama, warning of a thunderstorm approaching Cortland County. No, this rant is much more lighthearted. It’s a poke at the gun toting federal agents on TV shows, CSI, NCIS, NCIS-LA and the like. What’s with their gun skills? You see the same thing on all those kind of shows; a team of agents kick open a door, leap into a room, jump left, jump right, sweep a nine millimeter Glock back and forth, held up in front of their face, with TWO hands, and yell, “Clear!” Then, they move to the next room, looking very much like an army of giant, leaping frogs. A bad guy emerges from the back, holds his gun in one hand, fires, misses and then goes down in a hail of bullets, fired from guns, firmly held in TWO hands. 

I grew up in the cowboy movie era. A rifle was the only gun anyone held with two hands. A bad guy would make a move, inch his hand closer and closer to the six-shooter sticking out of his holster that rode low on his hip and was tied to his leg with a strip of rawhide. The good guy’s gun would fly out his holster and blast the gun out of the bad guy’s hand. Then the movie hero, in my case, Hop-a-long Cassidy, would audition the bad guy for a part in “So you think you can dance” by firing random shots at his feet and yelling, “Dance cowboy, dance!” Then, he’d spin his gun backwards on his index finger, blow the smoke off the end of the barrel and slip it back into its holster. All this, using just ONE hand!

Gunslingers in the old west, at least in the movies, stood erect and shot from the hip. Their accuracy was on par with a modern day sniper using a rifle with a high-powered scope. Sometimes, a gunslinger would simply shoot the gun belt off a bad guy’s waist. But, not today’s two-handed gun graspers. They go into a crouch, hold their guns at eye level with two hands, squint and then pull the trigger. Today’s guns aren’t just heavier (requiring two hands to hold them up) they’re apparently harder to aim, too.

It’s comical to watch a modern day crime show with a memory bank loaded with old cowboy movies.  Every time I see a squad of federal agents doing the frog-hop-shuffle, an image of John Wayne flashes through my head. He’s standing behind the leapfrogging agents, chuckling, as he shoots the bad guys with a gun in each hand, shooting from the hip. It makes you wonder about modern day gunslingers. At least the ones on TV. 

July 2, 2014 Article

The Old Coot is book smart.

By Merlin Lessler

My neck is sore. Tilting to the right, too. It happens when you’ve been in the library, a bookstore or staring at used paperbacks and hard covers at a yard sale. Book publishers refuse to line up the letters on the spine in a vertical, top down alignment or in smaller horizontal letters. Instead, they make us crane our necks and lean to the right to read the book title and author’s name.

It’s not so bad for the top few rows on the book rack, but by the time you get to the bottom row you have to squat, then get down on your knees and finally, lay down on the floor and do a military crawl from one end of the rack to the other. When you walk in the door at home, listing to the right, your neck bent in the same direction, dust on your knees and the rest of your clothes soiled and rumpled, you get the look! The one that says, “Where have you been?” I always lie. I say I got in a tussle down at the senior center. I’ll never admit I got this way from a literary endeavor.

What is it about book publishers? Literate, educated to the point of being highbrow, with all the knowledge of the world passing over their desks, yet they haven’t figured out how to print titles on books so you can read them when they’re stacked on a bookshelf? It’s bad enough in a bookstore or a library; at least they line up the books in the same direction. But, when you rifle through stacks at a yard sale, where the books are usually scattered about in helter skelter fashion, you have to lean right, lean left, right again, left again. Ouch! 

And, what about the poor authors whose books end up on the bottom row. A modern day Shakespeare would go undiscovered. Readers just don’t have the physical fortitude to squat low and risk tipping over on the off chance a book title or an author’s name might catch their eye. The bottom shelves should be used to store stuff, not books. Cereal boxes for example. Food processors know the value of having the name of their products readable when stacked sideways on a shelf. It might improve the circulation at the library and sales figures at the bookstores if the publishers got their nose out of a manuscript, took a walk down the cereal aisle in a grocery store and looked at the top, bottom, sides, front and back of easily read cereal boxes!

The only good thing about this messed up book title thing, is that you can tell who in town is well read. It’s the people who list to the right, have a neck that’s off kilter and dusty knees on their pants.