Part II—Grumpy Old Man

      By nature, I am not a grumpy or angry old man. I personally think that if you were a grumpy young person, then you will eventually turn into a grumpy old man. For many people their optic nerve and their rectal nerve have intertwined to give them a “shitty outlook” on life.   But, as my grandfather used to say, “It’s better to be pissed off than pissed on!”  I have never exactly been known as Mr. Sunshine, but I have always had a very good imagination, which when left alone, has provided me with unlimited entertainment for my entire life.  The voices and pictures in my head, generally, are happy, cheerful voices and happy, cheerful pictures. I have a wonderful imaginary remote control TV in my brain that easily switches from cartoons to sports to action adventures to adult channels. All the animals, objects, and people follow my ever-changing script, and all the women are beautiful, obliging, and willing.  My imagination is a wonderful remote control that has always entertained me, and it never needs batteries.  It is only when I am exposed to other people and their general stupidity that I become grumpy and cantankerous. My tolerance level for general stupidity is decreasing rapidly as I age!  I am not yet at the stage in my life where I am the old man on the front porch yelling at the kids to get off my lawn, but I can understand why old men do it.   The “rabbit-ear antennas” in their brains no longer get the “good” channels. Their reception is fuzzy and full of static. Poor TV reception can cause anyone to get a bit grumpy or pissed off. 

                   

      I do become a bit disgruntled and cantankerous when I see diet ads on TV or watch TV infomercials for workout equipment or fitness gadgets, such as stair climbers, stationary bicycles, and abdominal machines. I get pissed off at commercials that have a forty or fifty year old person stating that the machine, workout, or diet has gotten him into the best shape of his life.  I find the statements such as, “I am in the best shape of my life!  I am in better shape now than I was when I was eighteen-years-old!” to actually be pretty pathetic.  I don’t feel happy for or proud of anyone who says that. On the contrary, I feel sad for them.  If you are in the best shape of your life now at forty or fifty, you were a pretty miserable and pathetic eighteen-year-old!  You obviously wasted the best time of your life.  Remember when you were eighteen?  When I was eighteen, I could run 10-15 miles a day, go out chasing women and get rip-roaring drunk all night, and still wake up with a marble hard-on that would levitate me out of the bed.  I could also get up and do it all again and again.  Too much teenage testosterone poured out of every part of my body.  That was not being “in shape”; that is just what it was like to be eighteen-years-old!  No workout product or diet can make any forty or fifty-year-old do, or even want to do any one of those things.   First, running ten to fifteen miles?  I don’t want to run that far any more.  Why bother running when I can now drive?  (Now that I’m older and more mature, I don’t run with scissors anymore.  The verb in that sentence is unnecessary.) Second, staying up all night drinking and chasing women?  If a woman doesn’t give in after two drinks, I now throw in my cards and move on to the next game.  And third, yes, most men would still like to imagine having those marble hard-ons that you had when you were eighteen that a cat couldn’t scratch or you could use to drive a nail into a block of granite.  But the way I look at it, I could also get all dressed up to go out in a suit and tie or in a tuxedo.  But, why bother?  Why get all dressed up if there is no place to go or if there is no place you feel like going to?  A marble hard-on at my age just sets up unrealistic expectations for the woman for the rest of my life.  I don’t need that type of pressure!  I’ll be content with my memories. Throughout a man’s lifetime, his penis is like a tree.  In his teens, it’s like wood from the Petrified Forest. In his 20’s and 30’s, it’s solid and reliable like an oak tree.  In his 40’s and 50’s, it’s like a pine tree—flexible, easily broken, but still somewhat reliable.  In his 60’s, it’s like a Christmas tree—generally dead from the roots up and the balls are just hanging there for decoration.  Happy Holidays!

      Certain things now don’t bother me and make me grumpy, but they do puzzle me because I just don’t understand them.  I don’t mean anything like how the internet works or how someone texts on these new-fangled cellular tel-ee-o-phones; I’m not that old and senile yet. But there are certain things that do puzzle me as to why anyone would do or enjoy these activities. Maybe it is because I am too old, but I do not understand the fascination with fantasy football or any idiot who would “play” fantasy football or any other “fantasy” sport.   I’m sorry; I just don’t get it. Playing a “game” based entirely on random statistics is stupid. Fantasy football should not be based on statistics; it should be based on a player’s actual performance. Instead of being based on an individual player’s individual statistics, it should be based on the grades given to each player by his coach after watching the game film.   As far as I’m concerned, the word “fantasy” and the word “football” should never be used in the same sentence unless the word “cheerleader” is also used in that same sentence.  The only “football fantasy” that any real man should have involves cheerleaders—lots and lots of hot, sexy scantily-clad cheerleaders!  Any other use of the word “fantasy” and the word “football” in a sentence without mentioning cheerleaders is gay!  (No, I’m sorry.  I take that back.  That was a really offensive statement to make.  That can’t be called “gay” because I don’t image that gays are stupid enough to play fantasy football!)   If you really want to become involved in a real “fantasy” league, I suggest that you form a “fantasy porn league.”  It makes more sense, and, to be honest, most women would better understand your interest in a fantasy porn league over a fantasy football league!  Draft your porn team, track your players, and keep records of who has the most BJs, DPs, etc.  “Oh no, my star player is out this week with a yeast infection!”  I’ll tell you the truth, if you play fantasy football you honestly have about as much chance of your fantasy football league dream coming true as I do of having my fantasy porn league dream coming true. My dreams of banging a porn star like Jenna Jameson, Jesse Jane, Madison Ivy, or Brandi Love are about as likely to come true as your dreams are of becoming the general manager, coach, or scout for the New England Patriots—in other words, not a snowball’s chance in hell! (And I’m sure that Jenna Jameson and the New England Patriots both would be extremely disappointed if either of us “fantasy players” actually were in charge!) My version of a fantasy porn league is just as purposeful as yours.  If you play fantasy football, you are merely one step up the geek ladder from the nerds who play World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons in their parents’ basements.  And to be perfectly honest, I’m not so sure that you are one step up from them; you are probably one step below them!  At least the geeks who play Dungeons and Dragons will eventually grow up and become your boss at work.  The geeks who play fantasy football are already grown and now probably work for the geeks who used to play Dungeons and Dragons.  (However, it is a pretty safe bet to say that both sets of “fantasy” players have had limited access to a woman’s vagina!)

      Another thing that I don’t understand is what has now happened to my junk mail.  It bothers me every time I go to the mailbox and see the junk mail that I now get.  For years, I used to get advertisements and fliers for beer and whiskey, vacations, cruises, and porn.  Suddenly overnight, it seems like I started to get advertisements for life insurance, baldness treatments, retirement homes, incontinence protection, and funeral planning.  What the hell happened?  Hey, I still enjoy alcohol, trips, and naked women, and I still only piss in my pants on special occasions, just like when I was younger. However, the thing that really bothers me is all the junk mail that I now get for erectile dysfunction.  Where in the hell did that come from?  I have never asked for any material on that subject! I have never even researched it online. How the hell did I get on that mailing list?  Why is it now just assumed that I have erectile dysfunction?  Is it because of my age or is it because the condition seems to have been conveniently named after me?  I have a real problem with how the term “Erectile Dysfunction” has been shortened to the initials “ED.”  Oh, gee, thank you so very much. That’s my name, Ed.  Ed McIntyre!  I feel insulted that they have felt obligated to somehow name it after me.  “Do you have ED?  Nobody wants to have ED!  ED is terrible! ED disappoints women! ED ruins sex! ED can and should be treated and eliminated!”  Don’t I already now have enough problems with women to have named after me the one thing that is a turnoff to every woman alive?  I am still trying to figure out which one of my ex-wives they talked to before they agreed to come up with that acronym! “When I think of my ex-husband Ed, I think of Erectile Dysfunction!”  (I guess that guys named “John” feel the same way about having all toilets named after them. “Hey, I gotta go take a dump in the John!”)

      Another thing that I don’t understand and that bothers me is that whenever I now go out to a party, a nightclub, or a concert, everyone now looks at me like I’m an undercover narc.  Aged hippies and former professional partiers, like me, aren’t supposed to be viewed this way.  When I was younger, I liked my women the same way I liked my whiskey—aged for eighteen years and mixed with Coke!  (Actually, I still prefer my women that way, too…)  When I was younger, the “Three Kings of Old” religiously ruled my life.  Those sacred “Three Kings” brought great peace, harmony, and tranquility to my existence—drin-king, smo-king, and fuc-king.  Or you could say that I lived my life in 3-D—Drinking, Drugs, and Dames.  But now, when I walk into a room of strangers, people look at me and think, “Someone’s daddy is here to pick up his daughter” or “Put everything away; a poorly-disguised undercover cop is here.”  I get pissed off when a bunch of cheese-eating young people look at me like I’m a narc who is going to arrest them, or worse yet, they look at me like I’m not “cool.”  (I’ve come to realize that you’re only “cool” if the youngest person in the room thinks that you are cool!)  In my own mind, I’m still cool—it’s just that my idea of being “cool” now involves me dancing around, twitching like an anachronism having a seizure, and making younger “cool” people feel awkward and stupid.  In the eyes of my son, I will never again be “cool” to him, if I ever was.  So, since I’m now a total embarrassment to him, I’ve instead embraced the idea of really exasperating him.  I figure if I act this way now, later on, when it comes time to decide whether or not to put me into a retirement home, he won’t be able to tell if I’m senile or not.  “Gee, I don’t know, doctor.   He’s always been strange like that!”

      One thing that now irritates me is how easy young people (and others) have it nowadays because of technology.  The ease of technology makes the lazy, unappreciative young people of today feel smarter than us hard working old people. It bothers me that young people have not “paid their dues,” as us old farts have.  Am I jealous?  Hell, yes!  Take music, for instance.  When I was younger, we had to really search for and work for things like our music collections.  It took me many years of buying, borrowing, and stealing albums, tapes, CD’s, etc. to accumulate the thousands of “classic” rock songs that are now considered “oldies” and are much more common today as background music for TV commercials for tampons and hemorrhoid treatments.  The same music collection that now fills numerous rooms and closets in my house can now be reduced to an iPod or MP3 that is the size of the condom that used to bulge out of my wallet.  Also, it took me years of buying, borrowing, and stealing to accumulate a porn collection that could also fill a warehouse.  That, too, can now also be reduced in size to a memory stick or flash drive that is even smaller than that same condom in my wallet. And with both music and porn, with one click of a mouse on a computer, someone today can easily collect in less than an hour what took someone like me decades to find and collect. Young people of today don’t know the joy, thrill, and even danger (especially with the porn shops) of having to drive all over the world to “score” one small item to add to your collection.  We didn’t have computers or smart phones to supply us with all types of exotic porn from the internet.  We had to really work hard to find our depraved smut! Deviant lecherous perverts of today have it so much easier when looking for their depraved debauchery!

                   Part I — Dirty Old Man     

     I am now officially a dirty old man.  I did not really do anything or say anything to gain that title.  It was just bestowed upon me because of the way I must now look. I first noticed that I was an “official” dirty old man the other day as I was working in my yard.  I heard some voices coming from down the street. I glanced up to see where the voices were coming from and then went back to my work.  A group of young girls was walking up the sidewalk on my side of the street.  They saw me and immediately crossed over to the other side of the road.  I didn’t stare at them or say anything to the girls at all. I merely looked up and then immediately went back to working in my yard.  But just the mere sight of me sufficiently scared them enough to cross over to the sidewalk on the other side of the road!  I wouldn’t have thought anything about it, but, immediately upon passing my house, they crossed back over to my side of the street and continued walking!  They couldn’t have been more obvious that they were going to take a wide path to steer around me to avoid me for their own safety.  I guess that I now must have the look of either a recently released convict, or a perverted old man, or a child-molester, or maybe all three.  It is my new super power.  I now have the ability to scare children and offend young females with a single glance! “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!  No, it’s a Dirty Old Man!”  Or maybe it should be, “Look! Hiding over in the bushes! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a Dirty Old Man!”  I had previously noticed that when I turned thirty, I became invisible to teenage girls.  When I turned forty, I became a joke to twenty-year-old females.  But now I have turned into the troll who lives under the bridge and frightens all the children. “Answer me these riddles three, or else to the other side of the road you’ll have to flee!”

     I believe that all males are so-called “dirty old men,” no matter what their age.  However, they are not officially labeled as dirty old men until they are either caught doing something stupid or are, as in my case, labeled as such because of the way they look.  Most males are closet dirty old men and feel that they will never get caught.  It is a feeling of power to carry that hidden secret. It is not really a secret; we just like to think that it is.  It makes it all the more fun. (Psst…guys like boobs and butts and all other body parts on females—wow, what a secret! Don’t tell anyone! No one must know!)  I finally realized that most of us men never do get caught doing something really dirty, but eventually, we seem to start to look sufficiently creepy enough to be accused of being a dirty old man. (If it looks like a dog and walks like a dog and barks like a dog, it must be a dog.)  I have never owned a long trench coat in my life.  I just look like I am the type of person who has one hidden in his closet ready to be pulled out at a moment’s notice to flash innocent young girls on the street.  I guess that I now look like the type of guy who lecherously trolls the schoolyards and playgrounds of America preying on innocent children.  I never realized that I must now look like every white-trash suspect featured on the television show Cops. 

     Red Foxx once said, “I’m gonna be a dirty old man until I’m a dead old man!”  By definition, I guess that I have been a dirty old man since I was about twelve years old—I must have been a dirty old little boy.  I have always considered myself the world’s youngest dirty old man. I was not a pervert at the age of twelve; I guess that I would be called a pre-vert.  And now that I am older and have lost my amateur status, I guess that I am now a pro-vert.  My views on observing the opposite sex haven’t changed much since I was twelve.  I think that that was the age when I first noticed that girls were the opposite sex—opposite of me anyway. They were different, but it was a good kind of different.  I slowly began to admire their differences— nice, sweet, supple, firm, rounded differences.  I still respectfully admire all of their nice, warm, firm, tight, shapely differences!  I still can’t look at a girl licking an ice cream cone or eating a banana without having the same strange feelings that I had when I was a young boy of twelve.  (Sigmund Freud and his symbolism can bite me!  Besides, I always thought that a Freudian slip was when you say one thing but mean your mother!)  Also, women know exactly what it means and what they are doing when they are eating a banana.  No woman in the world will look you in the eye while she is eating a banana. Women understand the symbolism and know what it means. But when I was twelve, I didn’t really understand the symbolism of the ice cream cone or banana.  Something just made me feel like I was watching some forbidden taboo that I shouldn’t be watching.  I don’t know why.  I never quite understood why I actually wanted to be the banana or the ice cream cone.  (Hell, I’m not sure that I even know why today.)  But back then something inside me would make me have, what a female friend would describe years later as, “that naughty, mischievous little smile.”  Now, years later, I still get that same feeling and that same smile.  The only difference is that now that smile on anyone over the age of twelve is no longer considered “mischievous.” Now people think that it is just plain “dirty and evil” or “creepy and perverted.”   It’s the same thoughts and same smile, but it gets a different reaction from others.  Go figure.

     Someone once said that we never really grow up; we just learn how to act in public. All men have that same little boy inside of them who will never go away.  If a pretty woman smiles at me today, I react just as foolishly as I did when I was a younger.  Parts of me are just as immature as I was when I was a little boy. I still think that farts are just as hilarious as when I was a kid.  I still try to learn new ways to make the fart noise. I still laugh when I squeeze the ketchup bottle and it makes the fart sound.  I still enjoy farting in public and watching the reactions from others. I still love to watch cartoons just as much as when I was a kid.  I still love to act just as stupid and immature as when I was a boy.  I still love to pretend and play make-believe just as when I was a child. That little boy part of me has never changed.  I just can’t fit under the dining room table to play anymore. I think that all males have that mischievous little boy in them who lives to question both authority and the social mores of society. All males have that curious little boy in them dying to indulge in that forbidden peek at a Playboy magazine or hoping to sneak a peek at a woman’s undergarments.  It’s just that, as a guy gets older, he has to learn to suppress that Beavis and Butthead laugh he feels whenever he does see something like that.   However, that laugh is always in our heads.  The little boy in me still wants to smile and laugh whenever I walk by the ladies underwear section of Wal-Mart. (“Huh-huh! Bras and panties!  Yeah! Yeah! Huh-huh!”)  That same immature inner laugh has always been in me.  I still cannot be introduced to anyone named “Dick” or “Peter” without laughing. I have the same reaction to many other words, such as bone, bush, beaver, etc.  Even if I don’t audibly laugh, I always smile at those words. I don’t ever want that inner laugh and smile to go away. Women are the only ones who are upset by that laugh and smile.  Guys understand it and are never surprised if they learn that another guy is caught and labeled as a “dirty old man.”  He just got caught because he wasn’t careful enough.  The rest of us guys just think that he should have tried harder to keep it a secret.  Men always have been, and always will be, disgusting creatures with disgusting habits.  At times I still do disgusting, loathsome, and filthy things.  I have eaten a booger. I have pissed in a sink. I have farted on my own hand and then smelled it. And that’s just from this week! Men are somewhat well-trained canines who can walk on two legs. Men have always been men. Men have also always been dirty old men, even since caveman times.  Somewhere along the line, one wuss learned to suppress that laugh and ruined it for the rest of us.  My personal theory is that if we hadn’t learned to suppress that Butthead laugh, there would be no dirty old men.  There would just be boys acting like boys (men acting like men); still acting dirty and old, i.e.—normal—and women would have never known the difference and would have had to accept us as we truly are. Every male, (yes, EVERY male) at heart, is a “dirty old man.” Even your own father once looked at other girls, including your sweet mother, in that same “dirty old” way that you look at girls now!  In fact, if you think about every freaky thing that you have ever thought about a girl and every freaky thing that you have wanted to do to every girl that you ever lusted after, your father probably did think and do that to your saintly mother!  Your very own father was once a “dirty old man”!  In fact, you could go even further back in time to find that your own grandfather probably did some weird stuff with your angelic grandmother. Genetically, it’s in every male, so why fight it?  You, as a male, come from a long line of “dirty old men.” You, too, are a "dirty old man"  at heart.

A Teacher's Tale

     I've been a teacher for over three decades.  Let me state that the American Education System is okay.  The world is not divided by good and evil; rather it is divided by smart and stupid.  It doesn’t matter how many people you give a quality education to, it’s always the ignorant people who get the world in trouble. If most of the entire world was greatly educated, it would still have to deal with the few ignorant dumb-asses who will always demand to be heard!  However, the really stupid people are not just the dim-witted, lazy simpletons in today’s classroom. From my experience with parents, they are the really ignorant, spoiled people in today’s society. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, or as my father used to say, “The turd doesn’t fall too far from the dog’s ass!” My father, a brutally honest man who coached and taught school for forty years and didn’t care what he said to parents and others, lived in a much better and a much simpler time.  You used to be able to say what you really thought without having to be politically correct. Hurting someone’s feelings or hurting someone’s self-esteem was not a reason to lose one’s job or to have a lawsuit slapped on you. My father used to say, “Your kid may be an honor-roll student, but you’re still a dummy!” He would also give a simple answer to questions about why a parent’s son or daughter wasn’t doing well in class.  He would answer the parent’s inquiry with a simple: “It either one of two things. He is either lazy or it is genetics.” If I said any of those things to anyone today, I would be in a world of trouble.  Instead, I have to say something different and comforting to the “concerned” parents.  I say “concerned” parents even though the parents haven’t been involved in their kid’s schoolwork until the end of the semester, when it is numerically too damn late to pull up the grade to a passing grade.  In my mind I’m thinking, “Where were you for the last six months?  Why haven’t you responded to any of my communications and other grade reports?  Why are you so concerned now that it is too late?  Like my dad said, it’s easy to see where your kid gets his work habits and work ethics.  You just want me to pass him, or you just want me to give him the grade that you wish for him to have.  You don’t care if he actually learned anything.  You just want a solid passing grade.”  However, I instead have to say, “We have to find a way to motivate him to have success in class. It’s late in the school year, I know, but if he applies himself and comes by for extra help, he can really turn things around.”  I say this on a daily basis as I choke back the bile that is rising in the back of my throat.  I say these things because I know that the school administration and the school board and, especially, our elected officials don’t want anyone to fail a class, even if the student really does deserve an “F” for the class.  People in charge of education have the idealized notion that every single child in the United States MUST ATTEND and graduate from a four-year college. I’m sorry, but there are some kids who should set their sights on, maybe one day, becoming a night manager at McDonald’s.  That is as far as some kids can possibly go.  The reason our education system is so fucked up is because everyone, including us teachers, doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of anyone failing.  It is actually harder and requires more paperwork to fail a student than it is to pass one.  It is much more work for a teacher to fail a student as opposed to passing a student.  That sounds ridiculous, but a teacher now has to prove that a student actually did not do his/her work and actually deserved to fail. Excessive absences, tardies, and work not completed or attempted are forgiven. The teacher has to also prove that he/she has done everything humanly possible to “reach the student.”  So it is actually easier to just pass the student who did not do the work required to pass.  Ethics, honor, and any principles that a dedicated young teacher has are very quickly replaced by a sense of “just take the path of least resistance.” 

      I wanted to grow up to be rich, famous, well-respected, and a babe-magnet. So I became a public school teacher. Wise choice, huh? (Hey, I never said that I was very smart!) So while I’m on the subject of ignorant people, my hypocritical, eunuch douche-bag of a boss has recently begun adding quotes at the bottom of his daily work e-mails. He is one of those people who are happy to accept all the credit and pass all the blame. One of his favorite quotes is, “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit.”  I have noticed that a lot of people in authority love to quote that line.  It’s supposed to be a self-sacrificing, team-building quote.  However, the line actually translates to: “I want and expect a lot of people to anonymously work to better my reputation and career in order for me, and me alone, to look good because I’m going to be the only one who takes all the credit, anyway.”   I have also learned that these authority figures are the same ones who are so very quick to turn on you and assign blame to you to deflect any of their involvement in anything that doesn’t make them look good.  They love for the little people to work anonymously to help better their own careers and their own reputations. However, they are also the first to quickly turn on those same anonymous little people at the first sign of anything that is not advantageous to them. (At least they are consistent; they won’t share the credit when something good happens, and they sure as hell won’t share in any blame when something bad happens.)  Just once I would like to see someone in authority have the balls to say, “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the blame.” Or better yet, “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when I take all of the God damn blame!” (See if that doesn’t boost worker morale!)

      I finally figured out the secret to being a successful (happy, stress-free) teacher. I used to have an assistant principal who would constantly say, “Do what is best for the kids.” However, he never really meant it. What he really meant was, “Do what is easiest for the administration.” If you do that, you’ll keep the parents, students, and administration off your back (maybe).

     One time, when I was much younger, I was seeing an older married woman.  One day we were having sex on the kitchen table when we both heard someone at the front door.   “It’s my husband!” she whispered.  “Quick, try the BACK DOOR!”  Well, I know that I probably should have gotten up and run, but I just don’t get offers like that too often…