One Grumpy Old Man's Opinion

Before I get into anything else, I’d like to thank you people who have been following my blog for lo, these many years.

Both of you.

If there is one defining characteristic of my life, it is that no one has ever paid any attention to a single thing I’ve said. But instead of blaming myself and maybe changing my approach to life I tend to adopt my wife’s attitude that attributes everyone else’s inexplicable behaviour and failure to heed my advice to the fact that they are concussed, autistic or depressed.

She puts me in all three of those categories.

I tell her that the Psychology 101 course I took back in 1973 at John Abbott Cegep would ascertain that she is projecting her own ailments onto others. Any psychologist (not that I need one of those) would say that this ‘projecting’ is very common.

Probably the reason for this present-day angst that I have been feeling for awhile is that so much of life today makes so little sense to me. Any product that I’ve liked, be it a yogurt brand or a type of cookie, stops appearing on the shelves, any t.v. show that I appreciate goes off the air. I always thought that one was supposed to get wiser with age, become a guru whom everyone respects and comes to on bended knee in search of sage advice. Instead I find myself running to my children whenever I need help with the computer or my phone, whether it’s doing my taxes or figuring out a new app. I used to respect our country’s politicians, whether it was listening to Pierre Trudeau tearing strips off the separatists in Quebec or reading about how Sir John A. MacDonald established our country by constructing a railroad from coast-to-coast.

Now I listen to Justin Trudeau’s empty and breathy proclamations about the vaccines arriving “soon” and watch rioters knock the heads off of Sir John A.’s statues.

For decades I prided myself about keeping abreast of the news. Now I watch the aquarium channel instead.

Maybe I’ve already bypassed this elder-as-sage period and moved on to elder-with-Alzheimer’s. Just the other day I walked into a Tim Horton’s in Quebec without a mask.

After all, it’s only been a little more than a year.

But when chastised by the twenty-something cashier at least I didn’t further embarrass myself by saying, “Pandemic ? What’s a pandemic?”

It may be a mid-sixties thing. I remember talking to my father at the kitchen table back in 1993 I believe it was- (don’t ask me who I talked to yesterday.) The non-smoking ban in public places was beginning to gain traction and have teeth and I watched my father light up another in a two-pack-a-day habit that he had faithfully practiced “since I was thirteen or fourteen years old.”

“What happens ,Dad, if they really carry through with this non-smoking thing?”

He took a deep, satisfying drag, blew smoke out through his nose and smiled with what was either deep confidence or false bravado. “This, too, shall pass.”

Well, we know how that turned out.

I can relate to the old man.

It happens to the best of us,

Because, my friend, those were happy years, and few subjects make for more tedious reading than happiness.”

-Marcus Tullius Cicero

So… we’ve got that going for us. Who could say that this has been a happy year ?

And to top it all off, I just read an article in the The Globe and Mail arguing that rants are not good.

Uh-oh.

And to continue in the spirit of these times, this particular journalist, damned if I can remember his name, actually pointed his finger. Apparently it’s all Freud’s fault. Psychoanalysis and baring and then purging your soul, is self-defeating. And he even argued as to how self-damaging the primal scream is (but for the life of me I have never once come across anyone over three years of age standing there and screaming their lungs out.) Best to keep it all bottled up . And then what… get up on a rooftop with the firearm of your choice ?

Okay, okay. I realize that even I’m venturing a little too far into the dark end of the Twilight Zone here. And I don’t vent on Twitter but I guess for all those who do it’s a lot cheaper than paying someone $250 an hour. (That last figure was just made up. Like most of the things I say, I don’t really have a clue.)

But most of my waking hours are spent in a quandary as to when to open my mouth and when just to stand there with an idiotic smile on my face. Even my most pleasurable outlets can present this dilemma. My Friday afternoon hockey at the Sandy Hill Arena should be a pleasure, I’m told. But sometimes even there fun and games can become a stressor.

When we can’t ice ten guys a side to make the teams even we often bring in ‘spares.’ And sometimes these spares have to be broken in as to how one conducts oneself properly in life.

This time it was one of the regulars’ sons who lit my fuse. And even though he is barely twenty he seemed to have forgotten that day in kindergarten when they teach you to share and play nicely with others. Ten players aside means two lines for each team. This young guy was playing centre, my alter-ego on my team’s other line. Except that probably no coach in minor hockey had told him to change up with his linemates. Maybe that would have hurt his feelings. But out here in the real beer league world there was no referee in the game and no whistles to force a change.

Patience has never been my trump card and my inner equilibrium began to tilt to overload as he continued to make his way up and down the ice with no thought whatsoever for the aging fuming wannabe with one skate on the bench and my butt on the boards ready to spring into the action. It didn’t matter that I had already played two hours that morning in another game and that orthopedic surgeons have told me many times that both my knees need replacements. Fair is fair and this twenty year old Gen Zer should have obviously spent some time in the Special class, if such things still exist. “Hey Finnegan,” I yelled. I knew his name was Finley but I wanted to piss him off. “Time’s up. Time to get off. Let’s go.” I then rattled the bar of the bench door that could be heard all over the arena. Any counsellor would have a field day with me.

But it worked. Later shifts were shorter and (almost) even.

Sorry for the rant. Despite what the Globe and Mail told me I do feel better now.

Next week I’ll try to come up with something more like Christmas cheer.

In less than six months lies the quicksand of undisputed senior citizenship. Sixty- five years old. No one can deny you a discount once this age is attained. Which leaves me with the question.

What the hell is going on here ?

I once read something by a well-known book reviewer in the Toronto Star who has since died. Or to use today’s description – passed. Anyway, he wrote that well-lived lives were as rare as hen’s teeth. I remember thinking to myself… that’s a bit harsh. That was more than thirty years ago, when most people who were ‘passing’ had had their first car ride in a Model T Ford.

Now I look around me and think, “Everyone in the prime of life take one step forward.”

Not so fast, Perras.

I know Mick Jagger told Ruby Tuesday that if she loses her dreams then she would lose her life. But these days I don’t have dreams as much as memories and reminisces. Like the one in 1977 when I was a landscaper in the summer and I drove around an older Danish tradesman in a half- ton truck and what we did a lot of was lay interlocking brick for all kinds of patios. He knew what he was doing, I did the grunt work. His name was Robert and I don’t remember much of what we talked about that summer, but I do remember him telling me how he felt unappreciated and underpaid by our company employers and his line that ,”You’ll only hear someone saying anything good about you when they are patting your belly with a shovel.”

Well, I remember thinking, they always say those Scandinavian types have a dark side and a high rate of suicide. You know, all those long dark winter nights which leads to too much time with the bottle and all that.

Now I think… what a wise man. I think that Robert’s belly has since been patted down by a shovel but he lives on in a memorable way, in my mind at least.

So I trundle along not expecting to get much in the way of appreciation and getting less than that, frankly. But if this mortal coil is only what we make it, this darker side of life can make for much comic relief. No wonder in North America, at least, some of our greatest comedians have been Jews and Blacks, two groups who have been often forced to the periphery of society. Humour has been their elixir. And in the humour of the universe, appreciation seems to be hardest to come by in those closest to us – family.

At the end of this past summer I asked the youngest of my brood, my daughter, who was entering her final year of university why she seemed to spend so much time at her friend’s house instead of being happy in the comfort of the bosom of her family.

“Well, they have air-conditioning and a swimming pool to start with.”

Uh, okay.

And the father there is very nice. At least he’s always doing stuff for his kids. Like their chores and stuff. And he’s always bringing them stuff from the grocery store. Good stuff- like chips and chocolate bars.”

Not to be outdone, I said, “I bring back stuff from the grocery store.”

“Yeah… almonds, fig newtons and cheap steak.”

What could I say. My parents, raised in the Depression, had left their stamp on me. Ever since I was on my own my favourite supper was cheap steak and frozen peas. If I was still hungry then I’d have some fig newtons. And if I really went wild I bought some date squares.

So how can anyone deny that mine has not been a life well-lived ?

Lack of ambition is not a career plan. But all of my life I’ve been sticking to my no-plan plan and it seems to be working.

For me. At least I’m still around.

I’ve read about people who’ve had a burning desire since childhood to be a doctor or a lawyer or a sea captain… what have you. Not me, no fiery ambition, ever. What I loved to do, all of my life, was to play. And read,when I wasn’t playing, mostly about sports.

Growing up in a house beside a dead end street was the perfect playing ground for neighbourhood kids to play endless games. Road hockey and even baseball when we were still young. Later, an Englishman organized a soccer league in our town and as I grew older there was always pick-up baseball and soccer in the local parks and of course hockey on the outdoor rinks. Kids of all ages and sizes. And of course a lot of fistfights. No lawyers, not even parents, were ever involved. Nowadays I see flying pigs as often as I do kids playing unorganized games. (The blog title is, of course, One Grumpy Old Man.)

I always tell my kids that I was fortunate to grow up in the greatest city (Montreal) in the greatest country (Canada) at the greatest time in the history of the universe (the Baby Boom era).

But as anyone who has ever lived will tell you, all good things must come to an end.

1980, as I remember it, was the year of reckoning. I had just returned from an undistinguished six month stint in Edmonton, Alberta, supposedly in-training as a manager at the Hudson’s Bay Company, but mostly aimlessly wandering the floor changing up the record selections in the Toys and Music departments. (they were side by side.) Before that I had had a stint playing hockey in Europe but had returned home because I was homesick. And prior to that I had had four wonderful years playing hockey at Bishop’s University and the Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres. And oh, yes, going to school.

I was back home now, ‘between jobs’ and as my parents probably remembered it, a little too content with the status quo. My father had been a French Canadian orphan from the downtown Montreal working class neighbourhood of St. Henri who had risen to the top of his profession as the Director of the Council of Ministers of Education in Canada, now based in Toronto. My mother was a farmgirl who had led every class in every school she had ever attended.

They must have been disappointed.

I had just applied to Teacher’s College at Bishop’s University, for lack of anything better to do. One of my siblings, Terry, was around the house and eager to stoke the fire. You know those sibling rivalries.

“So, David.. you didn’t make it in hockey,” he began, smiling as he pointed out the ending of my first aborted career, “you don’t want to work as a landscaper and painter all your life (jobs held in my teens and early twenties as a student) and your business career was dismal.” I was about to say that the pot was calling the kettle black as Terry was also underachieving and had had even less experience than I held. But my father was standing nearby, listening intently and inhaling his cigarette with one long drag. My brother could sense he had me staggering and moved in for the knockout punch. “If you don’t make it in teaching then you’re just about done.”

My father nodded slowly in agreement and then blew his cigarette smoke out through his nose, no doubt envisioning a future for me similar to the fate of Howard Mosher, a man who lived in a tarpaper shack on a gravel road near my grandfather’s farm and who was so confused he had many times told me the story of him tackling a bear in the woods, armed only with a kitchen knife. One time my grandfather had wryly noted, “The sad part of that is that it’s probably true.”

Samuel Johnson once said that the fear of hanging concentrates a man’s thoughts wonderfully. I managed to hang on to that feeling through 31 years of teaching, twenty-six of which were in high school but included everything from Grade One phys.ed. to college -level English. Well, that was E.S.L. in France, but saying college-level English sounds more impressive.

Now I seem to have found my niche in retirement. And the smooth motion of skating allows me to continue my lifelong love of playing even now on oft-injured and osteo-arthritic riddled knees.

But how do the French explain it ? Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Without either parent or siblings around to point out my lassitude my daughter has happily jumped in to fill the void. Recently I asked her about her day teaching at the Carleton University Hockey School and then mentioned that she had awakened me coming in at 2 a.m. that morning

“And what did you do yesterday, Dad?” I replied that I had read the papers. I went to the gym. And oh, did I mention the fact that I had taken your turn walking Jasper?

She looked at me. Unimpressed. “So… nothing.”

She turned on her heel and walked out before I could even mention that I had also watched the Montreal Canadiens defeat the Philadelphia Flyers 5-0.

A pretty damn busy day, if you ask me.