There are many things to complain about when you get older. Take my knees for example. They just don’t work as well as they used to. On top of that, there are pains that become routine. You learn to ignore them and keep going. That is a lesson for later but it sets up the dilemma a Coot faces growing older. It becomes harder and harder to keep doing everything you used to do and on top of that you finally start to accept that the end is in sight. You are in the home stretch. You don’t have all the time in the world to accomplish your goals. You have to cut out the shit!
One of the things your mother probably taught you was to respect people, particularly your elders. If you paid attention, then throughout your life, you listened respectfully to worthless advice and suggestions. Maybe you ignored the advice later or maybe you acted on it. Either way you invested time in hearing and considering what somebody else had to say. Most likely they were people without any evidence that they knew how to manage their own life – let alone yours but you remembered what your mother told you. Maybe you got a benefit from this. Maybe you enjoyed the respect from your elders. Maybe you took the advice and steered your way around life’s obstacles or more likely got stuck in a swamp. But maybe you ignored it, did what you damn well pleased and screwed up anyway. It doesn’t matter much now, does it?
So today’s Coot Lesson is: Don’t listen to advice from fools. Forget what your mother told you. Like most everything else she said, it doesn’t help you now. After all, at your age anybody older than you is surely senile. Nothing good will come from listening to them. And if they are younger, they are nothing but snot-nosed kids, still wet behind the ears and maybe their bottoms, not to mention being infused with entitlement thinking from our public schools. Stop wasting time and stop listening to fools. At this stage in your life, you don’t have time to play around. Life is nearly over. You can see the finish line. You don’t have time to waste and you particularly don’t have time to listen to advice from people who have nothing better to do than to give it to you.
From now on, if you insist on taking advice, then only take advice from yourself – the only fool you can trust. You got yourself this far didn’t you?
Today’s lesson is about what is important in life- and what doesn’t matter at all. At each stage along the way, things seem important but as we move along in life, what was important yesterday doesn’t seem so important today. Listening to others just confuses things more. The result is lots of wasted time and energy along the way. With age comes wisdom. That’s what they say and after 70 years of life I can finally agree? I’ve done a lot of silly things along the way and only now do I begin to understand what is important. Each phase of life comes and goes and with each one, it seems that another stupid notion about life gets beat down.
It’s hard to believe that it’s 50 years since I was a cocky young pup ready to take on the world. Back then I was smarter than anybody I knew, didn’t need anyone to tell me what to do and when they did I wouldn’t listen. I was smart and the world was there for me to take. Too bad I didn’t know how.
40 years ago I finished school ready to make my fortune and start my family. I was not only smart, I was educated to boot. Who wouldn’t want to be me? Look out world.
30 years ago somehow the promises hadn’t panned out so well. The career was stalled. Home life was monotonous and there just wasn’t enough money for the good life. But I was still smart and there was more time.
20 years ago, my kids had grown into cocky young pups who thought their old man was full of shit. I was getting to be the old guy at work and there still wasn’t enough money. How long until I can retire?
10 years ago, retirement stared me in the face and when I stepped over the line, I found that there was nothing there. No fun. No adventure. And more important, no money.
What happened?
So that brings me back to the present. All through my life, the characteristics that I depended on to keep me going let me down. One by one, I discovered that nothing lasts. Here at the back end of life, it is very clear that the only thing left to keep me going is cantankerosity. You can’t depend on good looks, IQ, personal magnetism or even luck. The only thing is to let yourself loose. You have to be all that you can be, let it all hang out and show your inner self, warts and all without worrying about what anybody might think. You still might not be the world beater you aimed for but they sure as hell won’t ignore you.
I never thought much about looks back then. I didn’t have to. I was young. I figured it would always be the same. Then one day I discovered that when I wasn’t looking my waist had gotten bigger than my chest and covered my belt. My wavy locks were now thin and lank and my hairline receded as my waistline advanced. It was a good thing I’d decided to get married a few years ago because I’d never get to first base at the singles bar these days.
I soon learned that I wasn’t as smart as I thought. Or, at least , the rest of the world didn’t see how smart I really was. There was always some guy with a better answer or a dumb boss afraid to be shown up. Being smart wasn’t enough to make it big and being smart all the time is very exhausting. If you don’t get beat down by the next guy on the make, you wear yourself to a frazzle keeping up with of the pack. You can’t win.
You start the family adventure full on confidence. With all you know and the superior genetics you bring, your kids have it made. They will be world beaters and you will be known as the world’s greatest Dad. It is inevitable. Except it’s not. Good as those genetics might be, it still takes work and your kids got their schooling in California where self esteem rules. They want it all with no effort. Nothing you do to impress, cajole, intimidate or demand the hard work and effort to excel at school registers. They aren’t impressed. They have their own plans.
Your final humiliation is ending your career baby sitting. What ought to be your last few years of respectful dignified status as the senior officer at work turns south, when a buyout changes the management and new direction brings in your worst nightmare- a twenty-something hotshot. He will save the company and your job is to keep him happy. He thinks you are a pathetic loser and humiliates you daily in ways too subtle to file a complaint about. Not that it matters because they would love to find an excuse to fire you anyway.
Finally it’s your time. No more work. No more kids in the house. Time for you and the old lady to rock. Except rocking just ain’t what it used to be and neither are you. Between the afternoon nap, the arthritis in your hips and the fact that you are living on 50 percent of your inadequate salary, the only rocking you feel up to is that rocking chair on the front porch.
After a lifetime, It all comes down to this. Nothing good lasts and all those hopes and dreams, wishful expectations and even hard work and good attitude just don’t matter in the end. At long last, the truth that you missed all along the way is clear. You tried to hard to play the game. You counted too much on your abilities and good looks. You expected the world to treat you with the same respect you showed it. The world shined you on and you believed it. Now you have nothing to show for all your effort. You blew it. You were a nice guy through it all and look where it got you.
Today’s lesson is that it’s not too late to salvage the rest of your pitiful life, even if you are an old, over the hill coot like me. Stop counting on your skill, talents and good looks to take you to the top. Stop expecting to be treated with respect while you shovel somebody else’s shit. Don’t get upset about being used as a doormat. Stop worrying about being the nice guy and expecting that others will like you for it. It won’t work anyway and you will still end up a loser. Let it all out. Vent all those frustrations and smashed hopes. Let all those good intentions go and be Cantankerous.
Say what you feel! Let them know what you really think. Don’t pull your punches and stop being a wimp. No matter what you do, you are still destined to end up old and ugly, frustrated with the lumps life has handed you and disappointed at being let down by the people around you. Don’t waste another moment being the nice guy and expecting fair treatment. Nice guys finish last and as long as that is your destiny, you might as well enjoy it. The next guy that passes you by be sure to point fat ass and that he runs like a girl.
It may be a small pleasure. It may be petty. But it will help you stop feeling like such a loser. At least when you are old, ugly, smelly and make strange noises you can’t control, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you won’t be forgotten or forgettable. Cantankerosity is forever.
Your mother may think you are clever and dote on your every word. You may have been brainwashed in our worthless education system to think that you have value just for breathing. You may even be a pillar in your community, a church elder, a school teacher or even a politician. In the end it doesn’t matter. Here at Coots, your opinion is worthless. If we wanted it, we would ask but we don’t have time to waste arguing about it. It’s a free country for now but every second we get pushed further and further into a world where we can’t say something because somebody else thinks different and we might offend them. Someone seems to have invented a civil right that makes is a crime to offend someone. While we still can; while there is still no addendum to the Bill of Rights to say that all us Americans have a God given right not to be offended, Coots is going on record to say that we don’t care what you think. You can think whatever stupid things you want. You can be a damn fool for all we care and we are pretty confident that you have everything it takes to be the best damn fool there is. We just don’t care. And we will tell you what a fool you are- as often as we can.
You would think that that would make us good guys in today’s feel-good world. It doesn’t seem to work that way. Unless you are Al Gore or the New York Times, society frowns on telling people what you think. Everybody is supposed to be smart enough to make up their own mind today. It is just that making up your own mind is reduced to parroting Al Gore or the New York Times. Being smart and making up your own mind is now nothing more than saying the right things at the right time. Nobody knows how to think for themselves or even that they aren’t thinking at all.
We don’t claim to be smart here at Coots. We don’t read the New York Times and we stay as far away from Al Gore as possible (when you get older, you just don’t like to be where it is cold). We do like to think, however. We think a lot. And when we think a lot we just can’t help blurting it all out. So we will. Disagree if you must. You can even add a comment to voice your disagreement. You can shout. You can scream. You can throw a tantrum. But in the end, we don’t care. We just don’t care what you think. We don’t care if you are offended. In fact, we hope you are. Somebody needs to straighten you out.
Sheep are born to follow.
The role of a good sheep is to follow. Keep your head down; nose stuck in the butt of the sheep ahead. Don’t look around because you don’t want to know about anything that is off the beaten track. You don’t care where you are going so long as it’s where the crowd is. Don’t worry about what your destination will look like because it will look just like where you are now. So long as you stay with the herd it’s all good.: no muss, no fuss and no tension. The life of a sheep is secure, comfortable and stress-free. What more could you want?
You may have become a sheep after finding out that you aren’t cut out for the role of trailblazer or you might be following a family tradition. However you arrived at sheep hood, your troubles are over. It’s lonely on the path less traveled. It’s frustrating to try and fail and even harder to bounce back and hit it again. Why bother? How many times did you fall down before you embraced your mediocrity? One? Twenty? It doesn’t matter. Some sheep struggle. Others are born to follow. It doesn’t matter. The end is the same- a fat and happy life of blissful blandness. Life become placid and you are at peace with the world. You no longer accept any responsibility or blame for whatever happens. You stop worrying and striving. Life presents no more challenges. You experience no more frustration. Your mind is free from doubt. It is the way things should be.
