March 11, 2015 Article

The Old Coot unveils your future.

By Merlin Lessler

This is a heads up for those of you over 50 and heading toward Old-Cootville. People younger than 50 don’t think they’ll ever get there, that their youth is eternal. But you people in your 50”s have come to realize, “Yes, I will get old someday!” Your body has provided enough evidence at the mid-century mark to know it’s true, though you cling to the belief that it is way, way off in the misty future. It is! In years. But, those decades will fly by so fast your head will spin, like mine does every day when a mirror, a limp, or the failure of some body part shows signs of malfunction and slaps me “up-side-the-head” with a, “I told you eons ago that this was comings.”

The funny thing about it is you never fully accept it. If you are a jogger, you switch to speed walking and then just plain walking. Golfers learn to live with scores 5, 10 or 15 strokes higher than when in their prime. You give up showing your children and grandchildren how you can still do a running front flip in the back yard. Handrails start to come into use. You adjust. Sort of, but still think in the back of your mind that it’s a temporary aberration, you’ll soon recover and be your old self, that your trick knee will shape up and you can do some moderate jogging. Then, you cross the street and a car coming fast around the corner gets you scurrying to the curb; you finish your escape with a limp and a new pain that reminds you of the lie you’ve been telling yourself.

Still, you continue to think, this old man thing might be temporary, because the aches and ailments ease up, even disappear, but soon enough, new ones come your way. That sore knee feels OK but now your neck won’t turn to the left. The stiffness lessens and your foot gets floppy, making you stumble every other step. It goes away and a series of leg cramps hit you every time you sit for any length of time. Usually in a public place like a restaurant where you have to jump up to kick it out, much to the chagrin of your dinning partners. It’s a game of Russian roulette. You never know what’s going to come out of the barrel in the old-man-gun.

So you’re 50, and now depressed, because some old coot read your tarot cards. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can look at it as the greatest adventure of your life; on par with climbing Mount Everest. It’s just that the elevation isn’t quite as lofty, just to the top of a set of stairs. You don’t hear me complaining. I look on it as one of those “glass half full” things; it could be a lot worse; my memory could fail and I’d start to repeat myself, or my memory could fail and I’d start to repeat myself.

March 4, 2015 Article

The Old Coot is a matchmaker.

By Merlin Lessler

A lot of single people sign up with E-Harmony-Dot-Com, Matchmakers or some other such organization in search of the perfect mate. They fill out complicated questionnaires, then a computer program produces a list of likely matches: people with similar backgrounds, worldviews and other characteristics that supposedly determine long-term compatibility, but they miss a critical screening tool, the old coot coffee shop test.

It works like this. You get a candidate’s name from the match making company, then arrange to meet at a coffee shop (Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts are the best for this process, but other places that have lines and require choices will work too). Tell the prospect to wear a red scarf and you’ll do the same. Get there early, hide the scarf and sit in a discrete location where you can watch the line. If the candidate is a type “X”, they will walk to the counter and say something like, “I’ll have a medium coffee, cream, no sugar,” and hand the clerk cash or a credit card and complete the transaction. (If it’s a Starbucks they can’t say medium with cream; they have to say “Grande, with room, and put the cream in themselves at the little table off to the side.)

A type “Y,” on the other hand, will only step up to the counter after the person behind them in line taps them on the shoulder and says, “It’s your turn.” The clerk says, “How may I help you?” Y stares back with a look that makes you think they were asked to name the capital of North Dakota and its population. After an awkward pause, Y responds with, “What’s good?” Now understand, Y has been in line for many, many minutes, gazing at the menu, the racks of donuts and the display case of specialty treats. The server responds with, “Everything! What do you like?” And, starts making suggestions. The banter goes back and forth. Suggestions are discarded, one by one. Eventually, Y changes from a “don’t-know-what-I-want” customer to a fussy customer. “I’ll have a medium coffee, one-half regular and one-half decaf, two and one-half sugars, a shot of espresso, a squirt of whip cream, half & half on the side and make sure you add some ice. Your coffee is always too hot.”

And yet, it’s not over; it’s time to pay, which comes as a shock to Y. He/she (this isn’t a sexist thing; both men and women can be a Y.) starts to fumble, patting pockets or digging deep in a purse, finally locating cash or a credit card to present to the clerk. Payment is made and then Y says, “Oh! I need a bagel; what kind do you have?”  The whole process starts all over again. The people in line behind Y look at each other and roll their eyes.

Now, it’s time for you to decide whether to put on the red scarf, or not. No matter how it comes out, at least you’ve had an interesting people-watching experience. Us old coots do it all the time. We’re not looking for a mate; we just love watching the show.   

February 25, 2015 Article

The Old Coot isn’t real?

By Merlin Lessler

“Is it real or is it Memorex?” That was the question asked in TV ads, back when cassette tapes were the latest rage in sound reproduction, sending 8-track tapes, vinyl records and reel-to-reel tape players out to pasture. The correct answer was Memorex, not the real voice of a singer. Just in case you’ve forgotten, or have no idea what I’m talking about and your grandfather isn’t around to ask what the heck is a Memorex cassette tape.

A similar question could be asked of an old coot, shuffling around with an elastic support device on his knee, elbow, wrist or ankle. “Is it real, or is it fake?” Most of the time it’s real, but often enough it’s fake, a rouse employed to get some pity or to excuse poor performance in an athletic event.

The pity angle works pretty well. Pity is underrated, but old coots know it can pay dividends. Slap on an elastic joint support so it’s clearly visible, throw in a limp and there’s a good chance doors will be opened for you, you’ll be asked to skip to the front of the line or get out of taking out the garbage, though you have to be careful not to overdo the pity angle at home. Wives pick up on the fraud pretty quick. But, when you’re out in public, surrounded by people who don’t know you, the fakery works surprisingly well.

Most of us old pros use elastic support devices to excuse poor athletic performance. Ranging from miniature golf to real golf, from billiards to bowling, from casual bike rides to multi-mile bikeathon fundraisers. It doesn’t get us a head start or entice an opponent to ease up, but it does provide an out, keeping our egos intact. It excuses the tee shots that slice into the woods, the strikeouts at a reunion softball game, the bowling ball that keeps finding the gutter. An elbow strap excuses an unproductive fishing expedition where the only thing you come back with is a wild story about the one that got away.

None of this stuff works when we are with our own kind. Old coots don’t pity old coots for any reason! If an old crony is wheeled into a coffee shop on a gurney, with an IV sticking in his arm and a heart monitor strapped to his chest, at best, he’ll get us to reluctantly inch our chair over so the gurney can be pushed out of the aisle. Any attempt to use a knee, elbow, neck or other sort of mechanical support, an oxygen tank, a fresh scar from open heart surgery, will only net a chorus of, “I’ve had that,” or “I know a guy who had that.” We’ve been up and down the “my-whole-darn-body-is-falling-apart” road, and have no pity. We’re not real people, not anymore; we’re Memorex!

February 18, 2015 Article

The Old Coot shoots off his big mouth again.

By Merlin Lessler

This is one of those, Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus things. Whenever I venture into this arena I come out with scars, the verbal, in your face kind and the angry e-mail kind. Yet, here I go again. This time, it’s pillows. Decorative pillows to be precise. A design team works for months coming up with an attractive and ergonomically correct living room sofa. Three cushions to sit on, three cushions to lean back on. The ideal size, fit and color. A work of art. It makes it to the furniture store and the interior decorator takes one look, and says, “This needs some spicing up!” Then, proceeds to load on an array of throw pillows that accent, yet compliment the sofa fabric. It comes to your house the same way; the pillows cost as much as the sofa.

Old coots like me (and young guys too) take one look and say, “Where are you going to put the pillows so we can sit on it?” That’s where the Venus-Mars thing comes into play. We are told the pillows are going to stay right where they are. Duh! (The duh is implied, but the eye roll that accompanies it isn’t.) Every time we sit down we must move aside the decorator pillows. That’s when we discover the sofa is not long enough to stretch out on and take a nap. I swear our wives give the salesperson our height measurement before we’re led to one of the sofa display areas. All sofas in the section we are directed to are six inches shorter than we are. No naps on these sofas! And, when we get up, the pillows we tossed aside have to be put back. (Though hard as we try, we never do it correctly.)

It’s not just sofas that are loaded up with “unnecessary” pillows. Beds are too. It’s bad enough that you are required to sleep with something called a duvet, your bed is also home to an array of non-functional pillows. They have to be removed before you rest your head on a functional pillow. It’s kind of like the situation you encounter in the bathroom with the array of decorative soaps you’re not allowed to touch. They’re for guests! (Who never use them anyway.)

Decorative pillows breed after they’ve been in a house for a while. Their offspring plop down on chairs, the ones in the living room and then those in the kitchen and dining room; they get tied down and can’t easily be removed. Chairs, by the way, that were designed for comfort without the need of a pillow. I dread the day when the pillows invade our man caves and the other shrinking niches in our homes where we still retain some control. The pillows will win in the end. Venus always beats Mars!  

February 11, 2015 Article

The Old Coot rides the rails.

By Merlin Lessler

I took a train to Florida the other day. Me and 400 other snow birds. A few young couples with kids were mixed in, much to their dismay, but most of us were old guys and our long suffering wives. The train left from Lorton, Virginia at 4 pm, first loading the automobiles and then the cattle (us). It was an easier job to load the four door sedans and SUV’s than the horde of cranky, old humanoids. We waddled to our seats, lugging bags of reading materials, electronic devices, blankets and pillows and settled down for a “long winter’s nap,” expecting to wake from our comas at 9 AM in Sandford, Florida (just east of Orlando).

Picture this! Hundreds of old coots like me, who can’t walk a straight line on solid ground, maneuvering about on a rolling, jerking train, trying to navigate through narrow aisles and lurching doors, which made loud swishing sounds as they flew open and closed so fast that they startled and distracted us. At first, we didn’t know we were supposed to push a button to open the door. We stood in front of it, assuming it would open automatically, like the ones in grocery stores. It created a traffic jam, until some know-it-all in the back shouted, “Push the button DUMMY!” (not me)

Then, the line moved through the exit door on one car, three feet, to the closed entrance door of the next car, confronting the “dummy” at the front of the line with another challenge. Apparently the memory of pushing a button to open a sliding door doesn’t remain in an old coot’s short term memory after taking three steps, so the know-it-all in the back (not me) had to provide instruction, yet again.

There I was, locked on a fifty car auto-train with hundreds of my people, unsteady on our feet, moving around in a daze, hurtling south on wiggly train tracks, laid down a century earlier. The hard of hearing old coots yelled to their wives, who shouted in reply, to avoid hearing, “WHAT?” after every sentence. Others, yelled into their cell phones, having learned at a young age that you need to shout, and constantly ask the caller if they can hear you, when you are on a long distance call. All this, with a conga line continuously marching back and forth from the dining car at one end of the train to the bar car at the other. Adding to the turmoil, were trips down narrow, winding staircases to the bathrooms. What were they thinking, the train people, loading a horde of old coots onto a train for a 16 hour ride, supplying adult beverages on a bouncing, rocking vehicle and then locating bathrooms down a flight of stairs?

They were thinking though, but only about rules and where to put signs to enforce them. Every possible peril is acknowledged with a sticker, plaque or engraved sign. The doors between cars are overloaded with messages: two exit signs, a “watch your step” warning, a message only a bureaucrat could conceive and feel the need to paste to a door just below the “press” sign; it made no sense to me. It said, “Fully equipped FRA Part 223 - Glazing,” lastly, another “press” sign at the bottom of the door, so you can kick it with your foot when your arms are loaded with drinks and “freebies” from the dining car: sugar packets, apples, bananas, coffee, napkins, discount brochures and the rest of the worthless junk that old coots feel compelled to abscond with. So much signage on so small a surface. It’s no wonder the dummy (not me) at the front of the line didn’t notice the “press” sign.

We all made it to Sandford intact, but a few of us sported bruises, nicks or scrapes on our faces, elbows and knees, the result of bumping and stumbling in the aisles as we impatiently rushed from one venue to another, determined to get our money’s worth and to be first in line at everything (which is what old coots do), saying to the world, “I’m old; I don’t have much time left; let me through!” I don’t know what my wife was thinking when she made the reservation. No one knows more about old coots than me, having studied and written about my species for going on two decades, yet I went right ahead and put myself in harms way. Next year I’m taking a jet plane!

February 4, 2015 Article

Old Coot wants horns on shopping carts!

By Merlin Lessler

I wrote about this before, nine years ago to be exact, but was reminded of it the other day when I got trapped behind two “wide walkers” in the grocery store. They moseyed along in front of me. The people themselves weren't wide, but their walking style was. When they stepped with their right foot, it went way to the right and then when it was time for the left foot, it went way to the left. It was like walking behind a pair of waddling ducks. And, that's another thing, what is it with people who insist on walking side by side? They clog up the aisles. I wish carts had horns on them. I could get by the gridlock and on to the half price table in the old coot section. As it is, I have to trudge along at a pace set by wide walkers.

If it isn't a wide walker, then it's a "weaver" that hinders my progress. You know the type; they poke along in a coma like state. When you try to pass on the left, they weave in front of you. If you go to the right, they beat you to the open lane. It's just another reason to equip the carts with horns. I'm thinking of carrying a bag of M&M's with me. It should work just fine in our "obese" society. I could scatter a handful to the side of the aisle. When the weaver stops to gather them up, I could pass by with ease.

Something has to happen. It's getting pretty bad, at least in the stores where I shop. Maybe we should require shopping cart licenses. Shoppers would have to pass a written exam and a road test. It might make people keep to the right as they go down the aisle, instead of driving on the wrong side of the "road," as though they lived in England. If the stores were required to have the carts "inspected" by an authorized mechanic every year it would solve another of my shopping problems, a cart with a messed up wheel, the kind that won't go in a straight line. They constantly go at an erratic angle so you have to jerk them back into the driving lane every few steps. I hate it; it makes people think I'm a "weaver" - they yell and throw things at me as I wind my way through the store. If there were horns on the carts they could just toot and I'd let them by.

Cell phone use while pushing a cart causes yet another problem in grocery stores. You follow a “pusher-yacker” down the aisle and all of a sudden she comes to a dead stop, yells into her phone, "You're kidding! They didn't really do that did they?” I end up ramming the front rail on my cart into the back of her ankles. I apologize profusely, explaining that old coots have slow reflexes and can’t come to a sudden stop. If the carts had horns, I could signal to the other old coots in the store that I’d just scored one for the home team. Then, all our horns could be blown in a victory celebration, like the high school kids when they drive through town after winning the big game. Boy, I wish shopping carts had horns!

January 28, 2015 Article

The Old Coot lies about his age. All over again!

By Merlin Lessler

“I need to see some proof of age!” It’s a request we’ve all been confronted with. It starts when your parents enroll you in school. You have to prove you’re five. My mother and father, like most parents, couldn’t wait to whip out my birth certificate. It was a ticket to peace and quiet, if only for a few hours a day. 

I was 12 the next time I needed to prove my age, to get a paper route and to be allowed to ride the roller coaster at Palisades Park in New Jersey. Then came the most important one of my young life, turning sixteen and getting a driver’s license. I waited four long years for this milestone, driving the family car back and forth in the driveway every chance I got. And, around the block when no one was looking. The birth certificate came out again two years later. This time to prove I was old enough to buy a quart of beer, to drive at night, and to register for the draft. There was only one milestone left, or so I thought at the time, turning 21 and registering to vote. Now, it’s been switched; you’re considered mature enough to vote and fight for your country at eighteen but not mature enough to drink alcohol responsibly. I’m not sure of the logic in switching the voting age and the drinking age but I’m convinced it hasn’t worked. The number of teenagers that sneak a beer or two hasn’t changed. Tell a teenager he or she can’t do something, especially if you “forbid” it, and they’ll do it with more enthusiasm than if you said it was OK. I don’t know why we forget this when we become adults and try to “fix” everything with new laws.

This “proof of age process” doesn’t kick in again for about forty years. Senior discounts! At first you have to ask for them. And, sometimes prove your age. That’s when you hear, “Gosh, you sure don’t look that old!” You believe it, just like your mother believed it when she pushed you around the neighborhood in a stroller and a neighbor said, “Oh, what a cute baby.” But, soon enough, you no longer have to ask for the discount and the “Gosh you don’t look it,” comes to an end.

You no longer have to prove anything. Or, so I thought. Then, a few weeks back, I had to show my license to buy some beer for a New Years Day party. I didn’t mind, but I did think it was kind of stupid for a business to adopt a “100%, “ask for proof” policy. But, that’s what it’s come down to. We’re so afraid of making a mistake and facing the consequences enacted by the geniuses in Albany and Washington that we ask old guys like me to dig out their ID’s to prove they’re over 21. A five year old could tell that! 

My big fear, and I know it’s coming, is that I’ll start being asked for proof of age all over again: at coffee shops, so they can inform me that people my age cannot buy a small coffee and occupy a booth for over 15 minutes – at the entrance to the roller coaster I wasn’t allowed to ride when I was too young and now, it will be because I’m too old -  at the DMV, so they can reduce my privilege to drive to that of a junior license holder (no more driving at night and no road trips with a car full of old coots). When I complain about this, I’ll get the same answer I get when I complain to the doctor about my latest physical limitation. “You have to expect that at your age!” I wish I had a younger brother so I could “borrow” his ID and lie about my age. With proof! Another example of history repeating itself.