A desperate plea

SUNDAY, 15 MAY 2016

I have mentioned this before, but I am doing it again today, solemnly, in public: I am asking myself, pretty please, to not become a fuddy-duddy, a cranky old geezer.

As a matter of course it is mostly men who will understand this plea, particularly if they have reached their so-called middle years.

Middle-aged and older men are known for their conservative attitudes, and in many cases seem to have a permanent bee in their bonnets and a chip on their shoulders. They regularly feel as if their manhood is being challenged. One of the younger generation of men just has to think of doing something wrong, like parking in the wrong place, talking too loudly on his phone, or cutting in line in the queue at IKEA’s restaurant in Kaohsiung (while actually only re-joining his friend), and the old geezer pushes up in a man who a few moments before was just a normal human being. He gets red in the face, his hair turns a greyer shade from pure outrage, he wants to read someone the riot act, and he says things like, “Please! For the love of god, just wake up!”

That everyone shakes their heads and his wife distances herself from him one small step at a time matter little to him.

Even though there are places where old geezers still rule – Saudi Arabia being a fine example, it seems like fuddy-duddies are an endangered species – red in the face from almost permanent consternation because someone dared to do something with which he disagrees, and with a feeling that if the world had ever belonged to him, it is certainly no longer the case.

Now I just need to build up some resistance to my inner old geezer who wants to show his puffed-up face every now and then and wag his finger at perfect strangers.

______________________