Old Coot gets an alert. A Tioga County Courier Article of 5/25/2022

 The Old Coot has an internal check engine light.

By Merlin Lessler

 The check engine light comes on in my car every so often. It freaks me out. I started driving back in the 1950’s when “Idiot Lights” first appeared on the dashboard, replacing gages. Instead of an oil pressure gauge, that showed when oil pressure was getting too low, a red light came on. The same thing with engine temperature. Both lights signaled “DANGER! - Pull over and shut off the car or your engine will blow up!”

 So, us old guys are programmed to react when a light on the dash comes on. It signals trouble. These days we still have “idiot lights” in the form of a yellow engine icon. It tells us that something isn’t working right, but won’t say what it is. Our first reaction is to go nuts. Then, we remember it’s something minor like a malfunction in the emission control system; we don’t need to panic unless the light is blinking. Knowing that doesn’t help. We get perturbed whenever we see that yellow icon. Even the warning that the air is low in a tire is an annoyance. To avoid the aggravation, many of us cover it up with a piece of black electrical tape. Out of sight, out of mind.

 Old coot’s brains have check engine lights that come on too, whenever a body component misfires. A chest pain, for example, “Is it a heart attack or a sore muscle?” An ice cream brain freeze, “Is it a brain tumor or a stroke?”  We can’t cover those signals with black electrical tape, but we do the next best thing. We use denial to put them out of mind. These alerts pop on and off every other day. We expect the worse unless the warning is a familiar one and we know it’s just a minor malfunction that will go away, or one we’ll get used to.  Sore back? No problem. Had that signal before, just have to ease up for a few days. Emergency spinal surgery not required.

 I had a new one the other day; I heard a clicking sound as I walked. At first, I ignored it. But it wouldn’t go away. “Is it an ear issue or is one of my joints acting up? Ankle? Knee? Toe?” It haunted me all day. The mystery was solved when I did the unthinkable, for an old coot anyhow, and took off my shoes in the middle of the day. I discovered a nail imbedded in the sole. Mystery solved. I pulled it out, reset the check engine light and went on with the rest of my day.

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Old coot's age in months. A Tioga County Courier Article of 5/18/2022

 An old coot is how old?

By Merlin Lessler

 I was in the Owego Kitchen the other morning, as usual. A young mother at a table near me had a toddler with her. I asked how old he was. “He’s 27 months,” she replied. I couldn’t figure out what 27 months meant. I had to convert it to something I could relate to. I said, “Oh, he’s a little over two.” I wish parents of young children would use terms the rest of us could understand. I bet they would be confused if us old coots used months to measure our age. I wonder what the mother of a 27-month-old toddler would say if I told her I was 941 months. Would she have any idea what that meant? Not without a calculator.

 I blame it on the pediatricians. They track a baby’s progress using their age in weeks. Eventually, they switch to months, sometime after the one-year mark. Parents seem to stick with the monthly system; the rest of us have to do the math to figure out how their kid is. They don’t make the transition to years soon enough. I suggest they adopt a conversion table to communicate with the rest of us. For the first couple of months go ahead and use the weeks measure for visits to the doctor; convert it to months for the rest of us. After the first year, stop using the month measurement, start using half years or approaches to a new birthday, such as, “He’s two and one half.” Or, “He’ll be three in October.”

 You can use years and half years until age 7. Then drop the halves. At age 12 you should start lying about his age; keep him12 for as long as you can. Just say he’s big for his age. It gets him in the theatre at half price and cheaper meals in restaurants (he can order from the children’s menu. I do that, or try to, but that’s an issue for another day). After that era, you have no control. He’ll do the lying all by himself. At 16 he’ll say he’s 18 to get into R-rated movies. At 19 he’ll swear he’s 21, to buy a beer at college. When he’s forty he’ll lie in the other direction and claim that he’s in his late 30’s.

 When he turns fifty, and gets used to it, gets over the shock of being half a century old, he might start lying in the other direction. Add a year or two to his age to get a feel for what’s to come. When someone (usually a liar) says, “Oh you don’t look that old.” He can fess up, “Well, I’m really not, but I will be in October next year.” It’s what us old coots do to prepare for the upcoming fireball on our birthday cake. Eventually he’ll slide into the old coot age. For me it was when I turned sixty-two and signed up for social security. We shift to a new measurement system, using decades and scores. It’s payback time, from the times we had to figure out how old a kid was when we were told he’s twenty-seven months. I’m three score, a decade and a half, plus a few years right now. When I’m four-score I’m going to buy myself an old Jeep Wrangler, to celebrate the milestone. I’ve had three Wranglers over the years; I miss the attitude you get when you drive one. It makes you feel like you’re one score again.

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Old Coot is a stride watcher. A Tioga County Courier Article of May 11, 2022

 The Old Coot finds his stride

By Merlin Lessler

 If you sit around on a bench, doing your part (as a male), on a couple’s shopping trip, or any of the perches where old coots people watch; you can’t help but notice that no two people walk alike. Every person has a unique stride pattern, just like they have a unique set of fingerprints. It’s how they swing their arms, tilt their heads, plant their feet and more. The combination of variations is endless.          

 Some walk on their toes, others on their heels. Some swing both arms, others, one arm: a few don’t swing them at all, marching at attention. Big steps, small steps, an occasional hop step or hip slap, a duck waddle, knee catch and head bob make up some of the variations that create a stride pattern.

 If the police asked me to describe someone I witnessed robbing a liquor store, I’d tell them I didn’t know what he looked like because he was wearing a hoody, but when he walked, I noticed he tilted his head to the left, swung his right arm, put his left hand on his hip, and did an ankle jiggle when he put his right foot down. If an APB was broadcast using my description, they’d nail the guy. Criminals can wear gloves to prevent their prints from giving them away; they can wear disguises to throw off video recordings or witness descriptions, but they can’t fake how they walk.

 Another thing I notice about walking styles, is the way couples walk. Some move along in perfect sync with each other. Left right, left right, like a marching band. Others, stay parallel with each other, yet do it with different stride lengths; it must be some sort of subconscious mechanism that keeps them in line, like birds have when flying in a flock. Other couples walk with one of them five feet ahead. Acting as a scout? Maybe? Their pace is the same and the distance between them never changes.

 In other pairings, one of them actually is a scout, looking to the left and the right, pointing out oddities as they go. Other couples hold hands. It begs a question, at least for old coots who always wonder what’s going on: Are they newly in love? Reconciling? Steadying one another? Or, just like to hold hands? It’s hard to know, but fun to speculate. How do you walk? By yourself, and as a couple? Someone out there is watching! (Not just me) 

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Old Coot has shirt problem? A Tioga County Courier Article of 5/04/2022

 The Old Coot got it backwards.

By Merlin Lessler

 I was swimming at the college pool the other day. When you’re an old coot you have to keep moving or your body will lock up, like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz who needed an oil job to get him moving. So, I swim and ride a bike, two exercises that help keep me flexible without damaging my knees. Twenty six years of jogging put mine on the endangered list. I’m striving to keep them out of the operating room.

 Anyhow, I came out of the pool, walked across a large and busy parking lot, and caught my reflection in the window as I was getting in the car. It showed a big fish image on the front of my shirt. My memory is pretty good. (Well, it’s OK. It’s not too bad). It was good enough to know the fish is on the back of my shirt, not the front.  My shirt was on backwards!  I quickly pulled my arms out and turned it around, not daring to look around.

 Then, I checked my pants. They were on correctly, my shoes were on the right feet, the socks matched.  It’s a problem, this getting dressed business. For old coots! It’s not that were stupid; we just get distracted, and don’t pay attention to what we’re doing. “Distracted?” you say – “What on earth could distract an old, unemployed (retired) guy with no kids at home or any actual pressing responsibilities?” 

 That’s the problem. With none of those things to occupy our minds, we have assumed responsibility for fixing the world around us, complaining about, and pointing out, all its shortcomings. “They” should just leave things alone is what we think, and follow up with a diatribe about how it was done in “My Day.” Then, we hop on our cell phones and google T-shirts that can be worn frontwards or backwards, pants with elastic waist bands and shoes with built in socks. Never even considering, that everything we did was something impossible in “My Day.”   

 Yes, we are hypocrites (“Spellchecker” helped me spell that right). But still, we have a responsibility to fix modern society. So don’t mind if one of us (Alan for example!, now called one-shoe, two-shoe) goes around wearing two different shoes. It just means we’re on the job.  

Old Coot interruption defense. O.C. Article - Tioga County NY Courier April 27, 2022

 The Old Coot interrupts.

By Merlin Lessler

 Old guys constantly interrupt each other. Regular people do it as well, but do it to agree with, or to counter, a point that was made. Old guys do it for a different reason. We interrupt because we’re afraid we’ll forget what we want to say. The thought will evaporate into thin air if we don’t get into the conversation immediately. And, when it does, we stop listening and spend our time trying to resurrect it from the murky sludge inside our skull.  

 It’s not hard to break into a conversation when the old guy talking runs into a memory block and says something like, “What was that guy’s name?” It creates a pause in his babbling, allowing for an easy path to grab the reins. When that doesn’t happen, and we can’t wait for an opening, we interrupt.

 My friend Mike (with an S at the beginning and end of his name), has developed a counter measure to stop an interrupter. He hops back into the conversation, looks the guy in the eye and says, “Sorry I was talking while you were interrupting!” It throws him off. “Huh?” he responds, not quite getting the point. Too late! Mike is back in the driver’s seat.

 One old coot conversation that takes place without interruption is what we call, “Old Man Poker.” A guy will say he had a knee replaced. Another guy will say he’s had both knees replaced. A third will say, “Oh yea; I’ve had both knees done plus a hip.” It’s like a poker game when the betting is over and it’s time to declare your hand. On and on it goes in old man poker – knees – hips – shoulders, heart stents and so forth until someone comes in with a royal flush and says, “I haven’t had anything done; all my parts are intact and working fine.” We hate this guy. He won’t be invited back.

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The old coot is out of time. Old Coot Article of 04/20/2022

 The Old Coot is a day person?

By Merlin Lessler

A new conflict in America has been set in motion, a new schism in the fabric of our society. “Day People” versus “Night People.” The House of Representatives passed a bill to permanently keep our clocks set to daylight saving time. The Night People are happy. They want that extra hour of daylight at the end of the day. The Day People are stressed, losing an hour of daylight in the morning. Some of us odd balls, mostly old coots, want “them” to leave things as they are. Our constant rant at every change is, “Leave us alone!”    

 This new conflict just adds to the efforts of the media and politicians to assign us to separate camps, and then nudge us into conflict. Republicans versus Democrats, young versus old, rich versus poor, etc. etc. They feed on it. It keeps them in business.

 Us middle-roaders, independents, want congress to butt out. The time change in the fall and spring is a familiar event that marks the change to a new season. And, it adds some humor to daily life when people forget to reset one of their clocks and arrive too early or too late at an event. A chance to laugh at ourselves. A chance to dig into our automobile manuals and figure out how to reset the clock.

 Even the medical and scientific communities are at odds. One group says that changing the time twice a year causes an increase in cluster headaches, heart attacks, strokes, car accidents and male suicides. Really? Don’t people frequently get up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later. Should they stop. It happens all the time. Is it really that lethal? I’m a skeptic. Statistics do lie.

 Other scientists claim that year round daylight saving time is not in sync with our inborn cicada rhythms. They say it’s best to remain on regular time, all through the year. The working population and school kids adjust to changes in wake up times every week, and then sleep in on the weekend. We’re pretty well adapted to change. And, how about the millions of people living at the west border of the time zone they live in; their cicada rhythms are already out of sync. And they seem to be doing OK.

 All I can say, is this battle looming in congress will provide some hysterical entertainment as the seasonal clock resetting topic is debated. We might as well enjoy it. It keeps them from messing up our lives in other ways.

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The Old Coot is out of time. A Tioga County Courier (NY) Article of 4/13/2022

 The Old Coot goes shopping.

By Merlin Lessler

A reader (Terry) brought an interesting phenomenon to my attention. “If you want to know how someone drives, watch how they push a grocery cart.” They ram into other carts, don’t slow down for intersections and, heaven forbid if you get in their way of getting to the last package of their favorite cookies; you just might feel their cart ram into the back of your legs.  

 I did some research on my own. This is what I observed about grocery store manners that end up on the highway.  A “wide walker” set my pace. He moseyed along in front of me. He wasn’t wide, but his walking style was. When he stepped with his right foot he went way to the right and then did the same when he stepped with his left. It was like walking behind a waddling duck. And, that's another thing, what is it with people who insist on walking side by side? They clog up progress down the aisle more than anything.

 If it isn't a wide walker then it's a "weaver" who hinders my progress. You know the type; they push their cart 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 why I think the carts should be equipped with a horn.

 If the stores were required to have the carts "inspected" by an authorized mechanic every year, it would solve another of my shopping cart problems, getting one with a bent wheel, the kind that won't go in a straight line. It constantly goes at an erratic angle so that you have to jerk it back into the “driving” lane. 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 pass.

 If cell phone laws against using a phone while driving applied to drivers of shopping carts it would improve my grocery shopping experience.  - The people who sail along in front of you yakking to a friend. (Who, in my mind, put down their phone hours ago, bored by the endless stream of chatter.) Anyhow, they sail along in front of you, loudly yacking into their phone and then come to an abrupt stop, causing you to do the same. In their car they text and sit motionless when the light turns green at a traffic light. And much worse, drive right over bicycle riders and pedestrians, and of course, and into passenger cars. Shopping cart behavior and automobile behavior are one in the same. Check it out and see if you don’t agree.

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