Celebrating the Coot Lifestyle

Get it while you can!

You may all envy the Cantankerous Old Coot Lifestyle.  Who doesn’t want it- or at least what they think it is?

It seems ideal, doesn’t it; take no responsibility, complain about anything that you don’t like and then move on without ever having to fix a darn thing.  So different from all the crap your mother mad you do as a kid; more pleasant than attempting to satisfy your sadistic, incompetent boss; safer than  driving in the right lane and way less frustrating than all the  bureaucratic folderol that goes with life these days. Who doesn’t want the Coot Lifestyle?

It seems that every day somebody makes up new rules to follow.  Every time you think you have them mastered you discover that someone slipped in some new ones when you weren’t looking.  Where did freedom go?  Where did the independent, take charge way of life that used to be the American way go?  What happened to the pragmatic, problem solving mentality that made America the world leader?  Why do we suck up to assholes in Washington instead of doing what we were born to do-think?  How did we evolve from lone wolves to Pavlov’s dog?  It would take Einstein to figure it out.

Too erudite for me.

I’ll leave all that intellectual stuff to Bob.  It’s been my experience that thinking doesn’t do much about fixing things.  I’m more the take action kind of guy- do something that feels right and then decide later whether it made any sense or not.  I’ve heard this called ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’.  What’s great about this plan is that you either lead into a great new future or you make a big mess and sometime you can’t tell the difference.

Somehow it seems that I got diverted from my original topic- the Coot Lifestyle- into a rant about the country and how it has gone to the dogs but I suppose it all is related somehow.  All I know is that most people these days are too hung up about what somebody else thinks; how many government programs they can get stuff from and finding a drug to solve their most pressing problems (from my informal survey of TV ads, I conclude that for men it is getting it up and for women it is fear of falling down).

Bob’s solution is, no doubt, the Constitution- probably the second amendment- and Justin would write a poem.  I can’t be bothered with all that.  Mine is letting it all hang out and living the Coot Lifestyle- calling things as I see them, ignoring stupid rules and letting life happen instead of controlling it and living in a bubble.

Somehow people today expect a life with no downside.  There should be no disastrous acts of nature.  There should be no unpleasantness.  There should be no risk.  And we are all paying the price in a world of rules that only a fool needs.  This new world is boring with no adventure, no surprises, and no disaster.  But it is also a world with no excitement, no thrills, no imagination and no real fun.  All our fun is the safe, sanitary kind with imagined threats and such careful management of risks that even the fun is imaginary.  We are living in Disneyland.

I’ve gone off on a tear again.  Back to the Coot Lifestyle.  Like I was saying earlier, the Coot Lifestyle is all about doing what feels good, calling a spade a spade and getting yourself in deep shit from time to time. To quote somebody “It’s a wonderful life” but if you want it, you had better grab it fast before the government makes a rule to ban it.