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.