Yard signs equal angst. Published Tioga County Courier 9/25/24

 The old coot is tired of being a referee.

By Merlin Lessler

Early voting is underway! Not with ballots, but with yard signs. Back in friendlier days, these signs were better tolerated. People even wore pins – “I like Ike,” for example, for us old coots. They walked around with little fear of getting a punch in the nose. A family would drive by a sign in the neighborhood and say, “Oh look, Bill is supporting John F. Kennedy. I’m a Nixon fan myself. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten together; we should invite them over for a backyard picnic before the weather turns cold.”

Not anymore. “Oh look, they’re supporting “What’s-its-name.”  What idiots!” – or – “Oh look, those morons are for Who-you-ma-call-it!” We are extremely divisive in our political positions today. Best friends no longer speak to each other. Family members disconnect. Thanksgiving gatherings turn into a food fight. Signs stir up the same animosity. We should go back to the days when folks didn’t overtly discuss religion or politics. In person, on their shirts and hats or the front lawn. Sure, it’s a right, guaranteed by the 1^st amendment, but now it’s approaching the “yelling fire in a crowded theater” level.   

We can’t look to our leaders for this guidance. We’ve got to get the ball rolling ourselves. Calm down on Facebook, all social media. Many of us like a little of the policies from each side; we’re middle roaders. But right now, it’s like we’re traveling down the road in different directions; any move to the middle causes a head on crash. Is it so hard to accept that others can have a different position? On issues and candidates? And not think of them as idiots? Maybe? It’s up to us to do it. We need a small child to lead us. The ones who learn in kindergarten how to get along. Afterall, who is more important in your life, some politician in the White house or your family, friends and neighbors?  

Comments? Keep them civil; I know I stirred the pot with this one. That’s what old coots do. Send them to mlessler7@gmail.com. Or, to the publisher of the paper you read this in.  

 

The Old Coot zeros in, Article # 1,097 Published 09/18/2024.

 The Old Coot wants to see the zeros.

By Merlin Lessler

 It’s time to bring back the zeros. These zeros – 000 and 000 and 000 and 000. All twelve!  The print media writes things like, “The senate passed a $1.2 trillion spending bill today.” We don’t blink an eye. What is a trillion? More than a billion, but what is it really? How about if they ended the shortcut and put it out there as - $1,200,000,000,000. That might catch our eye. It might make us wonder how we can afford it. How much more will “we” be taxed.

Even the TV & radio media drop the ball. $1.2 trillion. Ho Hum. How about saying, twelve hundred piles of billion-dollar bundles. Or better yet, twelve hundred thousand piles of million dollar bundles. It might perk our interest a little more.

They do this type of clarification all the time with the weather! “It’s going to be 86 degrees today, but the heat/humidity index will make it feel more like 100.” Or, “It’s going to be 16 degrees tomorrow morning, but with the wind chill factor it will feel like five below.”

Once the money that Washington and Albany threw around got to be more than a million, a disconnect occurred between the spenders and the people that pay the bill. A billion here, a billion there. We hardly knew the difference between a billion and a million after a while. It didn’t dawn on us often enough, that a billion is one-thousand million. Line up 1,000 millionaires, each sitting on a pile of one million, dollar bills, take a picture, and that’s what a billion looks like. A trillion is 1,000 times as much as that. Now you’ve got the average American’s attention. Oh yes, we need the media to pay as much attention to the politicians’ love of spending as they do trying to scare us about the weather, which is a trillion times less important.

Comments? – Send to mlessler7@gmail.com   

   

The Old Coot hates modern faucets! Article # 1096 Published September 11, 2024

 Old Coot can’t handle it!

By Merlin Lessler

I first aired this complaint in 2011. I’m still struggling with the issue - the shower and sink, water control joystick. A single handle controls temperature and flow rate and I can never get it to do what I want.

 I don’t know how long these things have been around. Probably decades. I avoided them like the plague, but they’re all over the place now. I wonder why. What was so bad about a separate cold and hot water knob? A set up where you had perfect temperature control. If the flow was a little on the hot side, you made a minor adjustment to either knob, that was it. You could even do it with your toe when the bath water started to cool down. When I try this with a joystick, the temperature shoots all over the place. When I want the water to be a tiny bit hotter, I overshoot and threaten to scald myself. When I go the other way, I get a blast from the Artic that sends my heart into atrial fibrillation. I’m capable of getting all hot or all cold, but the delicate balance of lukewarm or semi-hot eludes me. I know I just need to push it a slight bit, a right-ish or left-ish maneuver, but the “ish” part gets me every time.

 It reminds me of when I was 14 and driving my father’s car back and forth in the driveway, never sure what gear I would get when I moved the shift lever. Every once in a while, I ran it around the block, because I couldn’t find reverse. At least that’s what I told my dad when he caught me out in the street without a driver’s license. It’s the same with joysticks. I end up “going around the block.” I’m starting to get really concerned. These controls are all over the place, not just in sinks and showers.

 The kids that grew up playing video games are now old enough to be making design decisions for many products. They have put joysticks on tractors, riding lawn mowers and a whole slew of devices. The steering wheel is going the way of the dinosaur, being phased out, just like the hot and cold water knobs in sinks and showers. I’ll really be sunk if I don’t get the “ish” part down pat before they put them in cars! I’ll end up like the Chevrolet Corvair, that Ralph Nader claimed was unsafe at any speed. That’s what I’ll be!”

 Comments? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

The Old Coot's phone took a train ride. Published Owego, NY - September 4, 2024

 The Old Coot’s phone took a train ride.

By Merlin Lessler

My friend Rick lost his cell phone the other day. I won’t mention his last name, but if you want your wood floor refinished, I’ll give you his number.

He was in a panic. Well, not actually a panic; he’s pretty even tempered. Let’s just say, he was concerned. He went through the house and his truck. No luck! Then he extended his search to the places he had been that morning. First, the grocery store. Nobody had turned it in. Over to Home Central - Not there. Then across the tracks to Scott Smith and Son where he had gassed up. Nothing doing! He knew he had it when he was there because he remembered checking his messages.

He did a lot that morning. A week’s worth of stuff for me. Finally, he went back home and gave it an FBI search. Nothing! He stood there scratching his head, “What am I missing?” Then it hit him, the chest freezer in the basement. He had put some groceries in there. Without much hope, he pulled up the lid. There it was, peeking out from under a package of ground beef.

We’ve all had this experience. Usually with a similar outcome. But not always! Sometimes it’s gone forever. I lost one on a train ride to Florida. I’d discovered it was missing when I got to the room we had rented. I knew I’d lost it on the train. I used my computer to track it down. Sure enough, it was on the train traveling north through Georgia. I called Amtrak. In hopes they could check the seat I’d been in and get it. I won’t get into what a nightmare that process turned into. Bottom line, I watched the phone go north to the auto-train station in Virginia, and then head south again. Then it disappeared. Lost forever. Wedged down in the seat cushion on an Amtrak train. I like Rick’s story better.