My Brawling Days Are Done, or Are They?

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July 5, 2017

My Brawling Days Are Done, or Are They?

OLD AND TOUGH

You get old, and you get mellow, and after a while, you start thinking like an old man, which is exactly who you are. You become a kinder person, you overlook people’s flaws, and you start mistaking that for wisdom. When you look back at your younger days, you begin to think what a jerk “that guy” was.

So you move to a 55-years-old and up retirement community for “active seniors” and you settle in. Then one day, you and your wife go to breakfast at the Sandwedge, which is the cutesy name for the little coffee shop at the golf course. And while you are eating your bacon and eggs and drinking your coffee, you see an old guy with a dead snake, going over to a table where four old ladies are chatting among themselves. The old man interrupts their conversation, brandishes the snake, thrusting it toward them to give them a scare. They recoil and give him that pained smile that women get when they are pretending to be nice.

“I hope he doesn’t come over here with that thing,” my wife Carmela says, and I assure her that he won’t. So we continue our conversation about this and that, and right in the middle of our talk, the old man comes over, interrupts us, and thrusts the snake – which turns out to be a realistic looking fake – in Carmela’s face.

“Please don’t do that,” she says in a calm but curt tone. But he just laughs and does it again. And that’s when all my old man kindness and wisdom fly out the window.

“Get the f*** away from us,” I tell him loudly. The problem is, I say it so loudly, that all the folks in the restaurant stop eating and stare at us, including the old man with the snake, who looks confused.

“Get the f*** out of here,” I tell him again as I start to get up out of my seat, and at this point he flees out the door.

It would seem like mission accomplished, but to tell you the truth, I immediately felt ashamed. I try very hard to be tolerant, but I scared an old man – no matter how obnoxious he may have been. I used bad language – I don’t talk like that anymore. And I made a scene and interrupted everybody’s breakfast by picking on a senior citizen.

But when I got home, I looked in the mirror and once again rediscovered the awful truth. I’m a senior citizen too. The old man and I are probably about the same age. He didn’t have to run out the door. He could have stood his ground and told me to go f*** myself. Then we could have thrown some punches, maybe wrestled around on the floor, and gotten busted by the Sun Lakes security team.

Who knows, after it was all over, the old man and I might have had a beer and ended up being friends.

Stranger things have happened.

– George Lee Cunningham

Do you have a dissenting opinion or any opinion at all on the subject? Contact me at george@georgeleecunningham.com and let me know. Meanwhile, you can always subscribe and get an email reminder of blog postings. Your name will not be shared and you may cancel at any time.

News

April 17, 2024

Minor Character

Sometimes I feel like a minor character in one of those really long James Michener historic novels. I’m one of the guys they check in on a couple of times during the course of the book and one more time when he finally kicks the bucket. In truth, that suits me just fine. I don’t want to be one of the major players – those guys who lie, cheat, sleep around, make a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and then then suffer a tragic death on Christmas Eve. I just want to be me – plugging along, having some fun, loving the same woman for years, and then quietly passing away.

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.