Get Your Grump On

“Hey, you’re swerving in his lane,” Grandma remarks calmly. Okay, not completely calmly. “No wonder he has to goose around you. Euch!” I grip the panic handle over the passenger window. Thoughtful of Cadillac to provide this. We love our car. It’s so comfy on our old bones.

“Should’a seen me,” Grandpa snarls as he fails to yield to the car in the right lane. “Damn car’s exactly the same color as the asphalt.”

“Lucky he didn’t blast you with the horn,” I mutter. “You deserved it.” The escaped car scoots away from us as fast as he can.

“Probably a kid,” Grandpa grunts disapprovingly. God knows who you’ll see behind the wheel: children, foreigners, people smoking cigarettes. All in a big, big hurry. “Looka that sucker talking on his cell phone!”

Visiting our Retired Horse today we learned that the rancher who keeps him is looking for a new position. That would be, uh, recently the case in our own situation and as a result, Grandpa Jim and I are learning how to get our Grump On.

We never wanted to be retired persons because we have long sneered at retired persons who drive Cadillacs like somebody’s Grandpa and Grandma and weave across the lanes. Wearing white hair, some, anyway, and looking straight ahead as if they were clueless. Avoiding eye contact to better to blame the victim, that little Nissan zooming off. Like many of our fellow citizens, we are reluctant retirees and grumpy.

“He won’t get good gas mileage hitting the pedal like that!” Grandpa says with satisfaction. We are quiet for a moment, recalling his own father’s complaints and how we snickered.

So this is what it's like. Oh hell, let’s hit KFC! I’m always thinking about food these days. Actually need to gain five or ten, must be the blood pressure meds. Now that Gramps isn’t tied to his job we do lunches out. After twenty-five years we’re both pretty fed up with my cooking and Trader Joe’s deli products so we cruise the Fasts: KFC for a thigh and cole slaw, a supremo at Taco Bell, cheesy taties at Jack-in-the-Box and fried tofu at the Kazoo Sushi Boat. Might as well feed ourselves.

The greatest retirement reward so far: a prime rib sandwich at Adamson’s French Dip, twenty minutes up a highway. Real, rare roast beef on a long, tender roll that soaks up the juices WITH a cup of beefy broth just right for jazzing up a leftover stew in the fridge.

Occasionally, certainly not every time we come down the mountain from visiting Retired Horse we allow ourselves to stop at the Woodside Bakery for a luxury hamburger. A Cadillac of tender, juicy beef on a fresh focaccia roll with a slab of gorgonzola criss-crossed with two very fine, not too salty, bacon strips. Probably mayo on the bread, who cares? Twelve ninety-five heart attack, salad for supper, maybe not even that.

This is how involuntarily retired persons live. Pre-elderly, I suppose. We shop for warm clothes and we shop for bargains. We don’t try things on in the store, too hard to undress in those tiny changing rooms, so we have to take things back. Never mind, we can catch a bite on the way home. And we can well use that driving time to criticize other drivers—Whoa, watch out, pal!—and comment on the real estate.

“Look at that ridiculous roof," I say."All those pointy gables. What are they, some kind of a religious sect? Guess this is the north ass-end of the city,” I note with a Grandma whine. “Those leaves will be off the trees any day now. I sure hope the city can still afford to clean them up. Wet leaves are very slippery.”

“And they ruin the asphalt. Eat right into it,” Grandpa replies. A True Curmudegon.

“Stay in your own godamn lane,” I advise. We’re never at a loss for words nowadays. We've got a good Grump On going.

Talleyho! To the Park We Go

“Walk?” Mopsy hurries to the door, head up, ready for Mission Squirrel. I buckle on her little red collar and tuck the leash into my pocket. As I close the gate behind us she trots down the long driveway as purposeful as the lead hound casting for the fox.

I myself might be a lord on a tall horse off for the morning hunt across the wild bogs of Devon or the green turf of Galway. Never mind that it’s just the sidewalks of small houses in a small California town and I’m on shanks’ mare, my own legs. Never mind that Mopsy’s not bred to outrun even a bunny rabbit: she a short Shih Tzu. A fox could carry her off as easily as he would a chicken. Mopsy couldn't tell a fox from a fox terrier. She busy hunting for squirrels.

She’s off leash until the end of the block. She may piddle on the curb area between the walk and the street but she must never step onto anyone’s grass and she must never set a paw on the street, although there’s not much traffic. She's focused on the mission.

So straight and narrow it is. She trots confidently ahead, all business, her tailfeathers shaking over her back. She sniffs delicately at a much-tinkled-on fence post here and there, then, leashed up we cross the street and come to the rolling green grass of Morgan Park, immaculately groomed by the city of Campbell. Nary a popsicle stick nor a dog poop since dogs are forbidden, even on leashes, in most Bay Area parks.

Thus, protected like the king’s royal stags, squirrels scamper freely on the grass beside the sidewalk under the tall redwoods. Look over here, I whisper, pointing. Being so short, her eyes only eight inches above ground, Mopsy doesn’t often see them. I don’t like squirrels. They’re not native and they dig up my gardens. They’re rodents, for Pete’s sake. So if Mopsy ventures onto the forbidden grass on this six foot leash, I say, Go get ‘em! Of course they’re up the other side of the tree before she takes the first step. Yes, I hate to hold her back, she’s having so much fun.

I have ridden to hounds on a tall horse, back in the day. Black cap, jacket, gleaming leather, bright jangling bits, the stone wall beneath me as the horse flies over. The landing, the gallop behind the hounds who pour over the ground, long ears back, tails waving like glorious flags. All, all of us as joyful in the chase as Mopsy on a short leash in a city park. The hounds never got a fox and Mopsy will never get a squirrel but now we both know how it feels.

Family. Dinner. Rules.

“Children today,” she began as her hands kneaded the knot out of my right quadriceps. “They don't understand the rules.”

Physical Therapist Alison is old-fashioned: family dinner at seven and don’t call at the last minute to say you won’t make it. Her eldest is studying to be a missionary. The middle one goes to community college and the girl is a high school senior.

“When my kids go to their father’s, they eat whenever they want, they come and go. Curfew? Forget about it.”

“Ouch,” I holler
.
“Oh, did that hurt?” she says without pausing. The room of pt patients looks up and goes back to swiveling legs in the air.

“My daughter’s only one I have any trouble with. That’s normal,” Alison hastens to add. “But she has to learn the rules.”

“How do you enforce the rules?” I ask, rolling over so she can get that tight spot on my back. “I mean, what would you do if she didn’t come for dinner?”

Alison stops to think. Valuable seconds pass—my massage, don’t stop my massage! then her hands get back to work.

“I don’t know how. Well I guess she just has to. I know they don’t have to do anything when they go to their father’s. They come in whenever, take their food to their rooms so they can eat in front of their pcs and hang out on their cellphones. I suppose I could take away her cell phone.” She sounds uncertain.

Pretty drastic, like taking away the car keys back in the day. Even worse: how would Alison keep track of her kid without a cell phone? I wonder how certain Alison is that she’s in charge. She pushes with both thumbs and moves off this uncomfortable topic to a more general rant.

“Nobody reads any more. My daughter does her Hamlet homework with an outline of the story on the computer screen. She doesn’t think she should have to wade through the language when she can just learn what the play’s about. But I tell her, the language is important. It’s important to know how people spoke long ago.”

She shakes her head impatiently because that does sound pretty feeble. I don’t suggest anybody read Sanskrit just because once upon a time it may have been spoken. It bugs Alison that she can’t remember exactly why it’s important to read Shakespeare's words because her own English class was a long time ago. I am so lucky that my physical therapist appreciates these refinements.

And hates to let the rule of homework go.

“You read Shakespeare in the original language also because it’s the assignment.
Like learning the multiplication table. And it’s also quite poetic, once you get into it.”

I agree completely. “See ya,”does not so melodiously sound upon mine ear as "Good night, sweet prince." And boy, doth it warmeth my heart to hear a New Old Fart complain about the Awfull State of Children Today.

I ask myself, would I have gone to libraries.com for the trot and the translation into modern English? Alas, I am not completely pure, myself but I am glad to report that libraries.com would not let me copy and paste their text into my text.

And, as an Older Generation who complained about hers, I am delighted that Alison's public school education has educated hers. Their ways were not so hopeless after all.

Alison gets both hands into my back. She rolling now.

“You can’t live with your parents forever. Rules are important if you want to have a job and pay your bills. If you don’t understand how to get up and go to work, you’re screwed. These are the rules.

“Kids today can’t make change for a quarter. Work, ha! My middle kid gets an intern job and he doesn’t have to show up until noon. The supervisor, or whatever you’d call him, says just put in the hours somehow. That’s not a job. Somebody’s got to open the store. You know I don’t think kids have any idea of what a family is, either. Scary, isn’t it?”

Ouch again!

But it’s not all bad. Alison’s Number One Son doesn’t own a cell Phone because he’s studying to be a missionary. When he graduates he’ll dedicate his life to service in underdeveloped countries. Right now he’s learning jungle survival. Missionary colleges teach counseling, ethnomusicology and developing worship communities—which is evangelizing, true. But if they dig wells and vaccinate against smallpox, I will suspend my skepticism. Centuries of history tell the awful story: for many, many years pious Christians missionaries have, in the name of Jesus, enslaved indigenous people, broken their spirits and taken their lands.

“Is your son a Mormon?”

Alison shakes her head as she lowers the table and I sit up. “Baptist?”

“No, something like ‘Twelve Tribes’. I’m not really sure.” Not a lot of religious dogma going on there. It seems that now Number One Son doesn’t have to show up for dinner, she's busy showing up for her daughter. Enforcing the rule of family supper at seven.

Where will you two be in ten years?" I ask.

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be all right. By then she’ll thank me for drilling all the rules into her,” Alison says. “I see us getting along really well.”

We'll see how the rules look in ten years. I’m thinking, maybe we'll be geo-tracked and ready for family dinner at seven. Family. Dinner. Rules

The Lion Tamers

Two people answer the circus ad for a lion tamer, a beautiful young woman and a mature gentleman.

"Here's the chair, the whip and the gun," the circus owner says. "Who wants to go first?"

"I will," the young woman says. Ignoring the liontamer tools, she strides into the lion's cage and drops her coat, revealing her fabulous body. The lion stops his charge in midstride, falls to the ground at her feet and licks her all over, purring like a kitten.

"Well," says the circus owner, turning to the gentleman. "Can you top that?"

"No problem," the man says. "Just get the lion out of the way."

Thanks to Suddenly Senior.com