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Crotchety I Am - by Wilf Bidwell Posting Date: May 5 2008 1:58AM If you had told me I was going to get this old when I wasn’t this old, I would have smacked you in the face with an old boot left over from the war. Back when I was growing up, thirty was middle-aged, at forty you started planning to die and by sixty, you were dead or pretty much should have been.
Now, for the love of Pete, I’m ninety-four years old and all my friends are older than I am. I feel like a damn bobby-soxer when we get together, me and all these relics. Every damn one of them claims to remember where they were when they heard about the Armistice that ended the First War. Liars. They’re lucky if they remember how to work a spoon.
I’ll tell you what I remember. I remember the Depression. I remember the crap out of the Depression. Want to know what it was like during the Depression? It was depressing as all hell. No one had any money except for J.P. Morgan and the Rockefellers who owned everything in the world between them. No one had shoes, I tell you. The only thing there was to eat was soup. No one could afford teeth, so you couldn’t chew a damn thing. Dust everywhere.
That’s a load, is what it is. People had shoes. People had jobs. I had shoes. My father had a job. Wasn’t so bad for me. You want to know what was bad? War. War was bad. We waited out the damn Depression and came out thinking the worst was over, but then we needed a damn war to stop the Depression so the price of a little economic prosperity was getting yourself shot at, which isn’t a fair trade in my mind.
I went to war. Flew airplanes, I did. Messerschmitts on me like flies on a wet turd in summertime. I hate Messerschmitts. Made it home, though. Came home and put on a suit and worked in insurance, selling peace of mind to people all knotted up because they remembered the Depression and the war and now there was the Bomb and kids were ducking and covering under their desks at school like that would save them from the all-holy hell of an A-bomb dropped on their heads. Stupid kids.
Then I got all promoted into management and I had two secretaries who picked up my cigarettes and dry-cleaning and I got to play a little slap-ass every now and then if I was nice, so those were the glory days because no one was shooting at me and I had clean suits and shirts and I could smoke cigarettes like a real man at my desk and grab a little ass every now and then. I even had a bar in my file drawer.
Then I retired and figured I’d die pretty much straight away because that’s what I thought old people did, but I just kept on living. Kept on living until I couldn’t get up and down the stairs in my house so well, so I had to give it all up like it was the Depression all over again and move into this home here where they take care of you pretty good, but they run your life, tell you when to eat, when to crap, when to piss. Like being back in the war except without the leather helmet and uncomfortable goggles.
But after all this stuff, I thought I was in pretty good shape. Thought I had the right attitude still, even at ninety-four, but I was wrong. I’ve become a miserable old coot and I’ll tell you why. I can’t walk so good anymore so I spend pretty much the whole day on my ass or lying down, so my underwear gets all binded up down there. Feels like I’ve ejected over the channel and my parachute straps aren’t cinched up right.
My groin area has been uncomfortable since the 1990’s, for love of Pete. This, I’m pretty sure, is why old people get crotchety. And it’s probably where the word came from. You know you’re old when your own crotch is your worst enemy. |
