June 19, 2013 Article

The old coot can’t have any fun.

By Merlin Lessler

“You never let me have any fun!” What kid didn’t say that to his mother while growing up? It’s not mothers saying no these days; it’s the government. All levels of government. They won’t let us have any fun!

I’m not sure when this so called nanny state started, but it sure has blossomed over the past few decades. I think we brought it on ourselves. Any time anyone had a problem, they went to an elected official for resolution: local, state and federal. Elected officials used to send us back to solve our own problems. Not anymore, they enact a law and the bureaucrats issue a new set of rules.

It’s OK for some things, like making it illegal to pass a stopped school bus, or to drive the wrong way down a four-lane highway. But, now we are subject to laws that cover every trivial social misfortune. And, the number of new “you can’t do that’s” are growing at an ever quickening pace. We’re overrun with rules, and we’ve lost our sense of humor in the process. 

It starts right out with our kids; they are as regulated as we are. When kids from my generation ran home and told their mother that Bobby called them fatso or string bean or four eyes or any of the 1,435 insults in circulation at the time, she didn’t call the kid’s mother, or the police, or the school principal. She sat them down and taught them a chant, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!” We believed it and repeated it whenever some “bully” called us a name. The school system wasn’t bogged down with identifying and preventing such “outlandish” behavior. (We played dodge ball too.)

When we called a random phone number and asked the person who answered the phone if their refrigerator was running, and when they said yes, replied, “Well, you better hang up and go catch it!” The police didn’t show up ten minutes later and tell our parents to make us cut it out or we’d be arrested and charged with harassment like they did when my son made his first crank call. Both parties got a kick out of it in my day, but not anymore. Not in our no fun society; it’s against the law.  

If you get busy and forget to have your car inspected and park it on the street overnight, guess what? You’ll find a ticket on the windshield under the wiper blade. And no, they won’t void it if you rush right out and get it inspected that day. Not anymore. Even if you were in the hospital for the past two weeks. This is serious business! 

Let your dog off the leash in an empty park so he can run free for a few minutes, like his great, great grandfather did – you get a ticket. Tell a co-worker she looks great today – you get sent to HR for a lecture on sexual harassment. Drink soda out of a container larger than 16 ounces in the Big Apple – you get a scolding from Mayor Bloomberg. Jokingly say that the fathers at Notre Dame are holy on Sunday but you can’t trust them on Thursday or Friday like the president of Ohio State did – you get a visit from the politically correct police and retire a few years earlier than you planned. We can’t laugh at others, and we can’t laugh at ourselves.

 
We’re left with one choice, us old coots living here in what once was the land of the free. Break the rules, and when you get caught, just say, “You never let me have any fun!”

June 12, 2013 Article

The Old Coot has an exit strategy.

By Merlin Lessler

 There is a lot of pressure on us old guys, to make some end of life decisions. “End of life decisions?” we respond, “I’m not planning on an end of life. It’s too soon!” You see, in our heads, we’re still seventeen, in spite of the evidence in our mirrors, in spite of our inability to hop off a curb without wincing.

So, when our doctor sits us down, after telling us the thing we came to see him about is just something we have to get used to, something to expect at our age, and starts an “end of life decisions” conversation, we get irked (to say it politely).  Our idea of end of life decisions is a lot different from what the medical community has in mind. We’re focused on how many Clydesdale horses will pull our funeral carriage. Whether there will be a 21 or 121 gun salute. What kind of jet planes will fly by in formation? Whether the baseball stadium will be big enough for a public viewing. Certainly not the decisions being forced on us by a well meaning, but presumptuous medical establishment, insurance companies and Medicare bureaucrats. All focused on the bottom line.   

So, we’re pestered into making choices. “So you won’t be sorry later,” they lament. “If you are brain dead do you want to be kept alive on life support?” Brain dead. I’ve been brain dead for years; it’s not so bad. I’ll stick with it. Next question? “If you stop breathing, do you want to be resuscitated?” Ok that’s probably a valid one. But, then it gets a little strange. “If you stub your toe? Get a bad haircut? Lose your car keys? Do you really want to go on living? Wouldn’t you like us to put you out of your misery?

At least that’s how I hear it. My response to the doctor is always the same. Forget about the standard protocols. Forget about the insurance company policies, the Medicare rules. Just fall back on the Hippocratic oath. Which, in old coot terms boils down to, “Do me no harm!”

I finally did give in and discuss end of life decisions with my doctor. When it’s a cold and snowy winter evening and I sneak out of the house or the nursing home and feebly limp down the sidewalk and stumble over onto a snow bank so that I’m lying on my back with a fantastic view of a starlit sky, “LEAVE ME ALONE!” I’ll doze off with a smile on my face and the cold night will do its job. A pleasant exit. The Eskimos figured it out a thousand years ago. Slip the old coot onto a pile of furs on an ice floe and let him drift off into the night. A kindness for a life well lived.

“All nice and good,” my doctor responded. “But, what we had in mind was more like you stumbling out to the curb on garbage night with just enough energy to climb into a 30 gallon leaf bag and reach up and pull the drawstrings before you collapse inside. He’s ready to fill out the death certificate; he just needs to select the cause: bad haircut, stubbed toe or one of the other terminal conditions on the list he got from Medicare.

 

June 5, 2013 Article

The Old Coot is up in smoke.

By Merlin Lessler

It’s worse than the squawk that screeches from your TV every time a thunderstorm rolls through town. I didn’t think it possible! But, then the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) launched their latest round of anti smoking ads, a $54 million campaign to get smokers to quit. Now, I pray for the Weather Service squawk. To blast out the anti-smoking ads.

Every day, day after day, we’re treated to the images of “Terrie” putting in her teeth, donning a wig, tying a scarf to cover the hole in her throat and listening to her lecture us on the evils of smoking, in a raspy, artificial voice. And then there’s the guy who cough so hard he throws up. It’s unwatchable, not to mention: in poor taste, gross and disgusting.

Lectures don’t make smokers quit. Even a bunch of horrific and tasteless TV spots have little effect. All the ads accomplish, is to make us scramble for our remotes. It’s especially hard on us old coots. We get hurt, tripping and falling, trying to get to the mute button. To shut up Terrie and her smoking friends.

It’s the same technique the teachers in my elementary school used when some kid (not me) drew a picture of a witch on the board and wrote teacher under it. We were forced to sit at attention with our hands folded on our desks until the guilty party confessed. We all got punished because one kid (not me) pulled a fast one. I’m not sitting at attention at my desk but it sure feels like it when I’m forced to see and hear the graphic images that the CDC thinks will get smokers to quit.

45 million people in this country smoke. 254 million don’t, yet 254 million of us get punished for something we didn’t do. Smokers never see the ads anyhow; they’re out on the back porch having a cigarette! Even the CDC knows they have only a minor effect. “We think (hope) it might get 50,000 people to quit (1/10^th of one percent of the smokers), says Doctor Tim McAffee, Director of the CDC’s, Office on Smoking Health. 

So, here I am, back in Miss McCormick’s 5^th grade class, sitting at attention at my desk, waiting for the dismissal bell to ring, all because some kid (not me) won’t confess to putting a frog in the right hand top door of her desk. Only now, instead of sitting at my desk, I’m in a chair without a remote, forced to watch Terrie get ready for her day. Toothless, voiceless, frail, bald and with a hole in her neck. It almost makes me want to have a cigarette!

May 29, 2013 Article

The Old Coot explains why he’s a grump.

By Merlin Lessler

Old Coots have a chronic memory problem. “Oh sure,” people say, “We know all about it; you can’t remember names; you can’t remember what you went into the living room to get, stuff like that.” That’s all true, and a frustration for sure. But, that’s not the memory problem I’m talking about. The real problem is that we remember too much.

A young guy (in his twenties) will say to an old coot, “Boy the village looks great!” The old coot will respond, “Oh yea? You should have seen it when I was a kid. It was a commercial beehive. We had a lot more commerce: shoe stores, department stores, music stores, restaurants. The sidewalks were packed with shoppers and diners.”

Or, the young guy might say, “I just got a new Chevy; it’s super; it reminds me to change the oil, has built in GPS, 4 speaker stereo; it even lets me know if one of the tires is a little low on air. To which the old coot will respond, “Oh yea! Well, in my day we could fix every thing on a car. Now, a guy can’t fix anything; it’s all controlled by the computer. You’re not in charge of the car; the car is in charge of you.”

You name a topic; we can tell you how much better it was “back then” in the good old days. Especially, when it comes to the cost of things. Mention how much you just paid for gas and you get an old coot eruption. “$3.65 for a gallon of gas! In my day it was twenty-six cents a gallon; pizza was a buck; candy bars were a nickel; movies were a quarter; bla bla bla.” We fail to mention that the minimum wage was eighty cents an hour.

Of course, we heard the same type of gripes from old guys when we were the young guys. Those guys groused about all the changes too. How everything had gone down hill; how stupid the government was. We thought they were sour old crows. “Look around,” we’d say. “Things are great; we’ve got TV, private phone lines, four-lane highways, pizza, cinematic movies, 33 1/3 records, automatic transmissions.” And, they would come back with, “Well, we hardly paid any federal income tax and Social Security was secure. And besides, everything you have you owe to us; we won the wars, the big ones, WWI and WWII.”

It’s the long-term memory that makes old coots into old grumps. We live in two worlds: today’s world and the “back then” one. So, be nice to us; we have a double problem; a long-term memory that is too good, and a short-term memory that is….., oh what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yea, unreliable.

May 22, 2013 Article

The Old Coot is overloaded!

By Merlin Lessler

So here I am at a (wedding, opera, cocktail party, christening – you fill in the blank) standing around with the other men in attendance, looking lumpy. Our pockets are bulging with lipsticks, compacts, credit cards, store cards, wads of wallet photos, car keys, discount coupons, perfume samples and heavily highlighted copies of Men Are from Mars; Women Are from Venus. And why? Because clothing designers won’t put pockets in women’s clothes.

Oh sure, there are some things with pockets, but only as an artistic element, not as a fully functioning compartment. The fashion people aren’t interested in functionality. So, men get all the stuff and jam it in their pockets. We can’t get out of it. We’ve got pockets galore. Four in a suit coat, four in a pair of pants. It’s why we don’t like to dance at weddings. And, if we do, it’s why we dance funny. The weight in our pockets shifts with every dance step and makes us lurch and stagger around and lose the beat. It’s the old two-step. One step is our dance move; the next is the stumble we take to recover our balance.

I first became aware of this pocket deficiency in women’s clothes back when I was a kid, proudly strutting around in a coveted pair of Levi’s. We didn’t call them jeans back then; we called them dungarees. Jeans were what our sisters wore, denim pants with an elastic top, a zipper up the side and NO POCKETS! There I was in dungarees, with enough pockets to handle a jack knife, a yoyo, a five pack of baseball cards, a derringer cap pistol and a frog or two. My sister didn’t even have a place to put a skate key. She had to string it on a shoelace and tie it around her neck. Jeans have changed since then; women’s jeans now have pockets, but still, they don’t function very well. The jeans are too tight to accommodate anything bigger than a credit card.

It’s why men have started using “man purses” disguised as masculine looking brief cases or camera bags. If you peek inside you’ll find lipsticks, compacts and other items we’re lugging around for our wives!

May 15, 2013 Article

The Old Coot doesn’t know your name!

By Merlin Lessler

It was a typical morning in the Goat Boy Coffee Bar – There I was, pontificating along with the regular crew – solving the Village, Town, County, State and National problems when in walks Phil Wiles. “Hi Paul,” I said, a little too loud. “I’m not Paul; I’m Phil,” he replied. “No you’re not,” I responded. “I just saw Phil at Dunkin Donuts and said Hi Phil and he said Hi back.”

“No! Really! I am Phil! Paul didn’t want to correct you for the 100^th time, so he let it go.” That’s when my compatriots deserted me. Their catcalls and whoops let me know I was wrong, yet again! So, I gave in. Maybe he was Phil. It’s confusing for an old coot, this business of trying to use the right name when you see someone. Paul and Phil are especially hard, being twins, but adding to the confusion is Jody Rose’s husband, Paul Philips. My brain starts to spit & sputter when I run into him. What should I say? “Hi Paul? Hi Phil? Is he Paul Philips or Philip Paul? I know I won’t get it right. I really get mixed up: Paul Wiles, Phil Wiles and Paul Philips. It’s no wonder I’ve dropped names entirely and greet people with Hi Captain, Hi Kid, Hey Man, How you guys doing?

But, it’s not me; it’s them! The people with similar sounding or otherwise confusing names: Craig and Greg, for example; who can keep them straight? How about Lynn, Laurie, Laura, Lana, Lisa, Lorna, Liza and all the rest of the “L” names. It’s beyond my capabilities. Even the name of the village I live in causes me problems. I’ll tell someone I live in Owego and they often say, “Oh, Oswego, I’ve heard of that; isn’t it on Lake Ontario?”

It’s not just people’s names that mess me up. The street names around here are ridiculous, the ones that have several names for the same street: Academy Street and Mc Master Street - East Ave becoming West Ave turning into Mountain Road and finally, East Beacher Hill – and how about the four-bagger, it starts out as East Front Street. You drive along looking at the ducks on Brick Pond and presto; you’re on Taylor Road. Look down to read a text message and you find yourself on Bodle Hill. Bend over to pick up the Big Mac that slid off the seat onto the floor and you’re on Day Hollow. The same road, four different names. When someone asks me for directions I always say, “Sorry, no speaka da English! Governor!”

 

May 8, 2013 Article

The Old Coot is a criminal?

By Merlin Lessler

I got stopped by the cops the other day. I knew it was just a matter of time – I was long overdue. “What seems to be the problem officer?” I politely asked, as we all do when pulled over and are blatantly guilty (of something). It’s called the “innocent as a lamb” strategy. It never works!

“License and registration please,” You know the drill; they take your credentials and get back into the squad car to run you through the system: Outstanding warrants? Escaped convict? Stolen car? Runaway or missing person? I wasn’t worried about that stuff. I knew my slate was clean. Nor, was I worried about the out of date inspection sticker on the windshield. I could handle a ticket for that. It wouldn’t affect my life style. I was worried about getting charged with DWO (Driving While Old).

It’s not an official violation. Not yet! But as soon as the traffic safety people get the drunks off the road, the cell phone users, the texters and the road-rage drivers they are going to come after us old guys. We don’t cause a lot of accidents, not as many as the under 25 crowd, but we do something worse; we drive fifty-five in the passing lane with our blinker flashing endlessly. We take forever to get into our car and pull out of the way while you wait to grab the only empty space in the lot. We turn left on red (when no cars are coming). What’s the difference? Left? Right? If no cars are coming, we go!

I can see the handwriting on the wall. DWO is in my future. The police won’t subject me to a breathalyzer test; they’ll count the wrinkles – then make me stand on one foot to check my balance (try it for 60 seconds; if you can’t do it you are headed for trouble too). They’ll make me retake the driver’s test. The only part I’ll pass is the parallel parking requirement. The thing that knocks out all the young kids. It’s a useless skill; 99.9% of all parking is pull in, not parallel. Yet, it’s an integral component in the path to a license, and the only driving skill us old coots still retain.

It’s why we are drawn to Florida – the state with the most effective lobbyists for old guys. The state is loaded with laws that protect my elderly brothers and sisters. The politicians don’t even think about passing laws to restrict old coots – just the opposite. Oh sure, the place is loaded with old coots like me that pull out in front of you and then crawl along at speeds that barely register on the speedometer, turn without signaling and give you a dirty look if you complain – park their big boats so close to you in parking lots that you can’t open your door.

But, we don’t weave through traffic at 80 MPH – slam on the brakes at a stop sign half way into the intersection and sneer at the terrified pedestrians waiting to cross. Still, it’s just a matter of time until I’m dragged before a judge, charged with DWO! I’ll put my hat on backwards, slip on a pair of flip-flops, untuck my shirt and plead “not old.” I just hope the judge is older than me.