My Journey to Grumpiness

    I have to admit I've been a little grumpy lately. Who wouldn't be with the state of the economy, crime in the streets, rising taxes, the continuously escalating price of gasoline, and that rotten little Peterson boy, who uses my flower bed as a short-cut to the school bus stop. I guess I should mention the guy who walks what is either a large dog or a small Clydesdale with bowel movement problems by my house every day. Do you think it would kill him to bring a shovel and a thirty-gallon trash bag along?

    I just returned from the grocery store where it seems the packages are getting smaller as the prices go up. Have you seen the price of a can of coffee, and a tiny jar of peanut butter? Right now I'm sitting in front of a huge stack of bills, and a politician on television is telling me that the economy is turning the corner. I wonder what corner he's talking about. If I peek around my corner, I see a gigantic sinkhole ready to swallow me up. What's this? Can you believe it. My cable bill just went up again! My wife says I need to relax and not get so upset with things. Just yesterday she said,

"If you keep this up, you're going to one day end up being a grumpy old man."

    Her words got me to thinking about grumpy old men and the possibility of joining this exclusive fraternity. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe - just maybe - it wasn't such a bad thing after all.

    When I was a kid our neighborhood had its own grumpy old man. His name was Elmer Smith. We would ride our bikes by his house as fast as we could. If he wasn't cutting his grass or working on a car in his garage, he would be sitting on his porch in a rocking chair with an ancient looking dog sleeping soundly by his side. If we slowed down or stopped, he would stand up, take a few steps forward, and stare at us with a look that would make the hairs on the back of our necks stand up. We all knew never to get within a hundred feet of his meticulously manicured lawn. Even neighborhood dogs would give his house a wide berth and cross to the other side of the street as they passed.

    We had often heard stories of a young boy named Billy Dugan who had once made the mistake of entering Elmer Smith's back yard to retrieve a stray baseball. Legend had it that his spirit was still wandering the hedges, rose bushes and garden of Elmer's backyard looking for his lost baseball.

    I guess every neighborhood has at least one grumpy old man, and it seems they're all pretty much the same. When we moved into our house, we met a grumpy old man named Floyd Wasserman, who lived four houses down from us on the corner. You may have noticed a few things about grumpy old men. They're all lean and wiry, and they look like they're made of nothing but bone and gristle. They also all live to be about a hundred and twenty years old. I think they're all just too stubborn to move on.

    All you ever see them wearing is either a pair of bib overalls over a denim shirt, or dark blue mechanic’s coveralls. They also have their sleeves rolled up. You'll notice that their forearms are all corded muscle, and they have hands as big as hams. They usually have a pair of thick reading glasses poking out of their shirt pocket that they pull out only when they read the paper in an old rocking chair on their front porch. They also seem to have an ever-present cup of steaming hot coffee in their hand.

    Did you know that grumpy old men can fix anything? It's true. It could be cars, trucks, toasters, lawnmowers, furnaces, air conditioners, hedge trimmers, hot water heaters, or motorcycles. I wouldn't be surprised if extraterrestrials passing by the earth with malfunctioning warp drives or life support systems, might just scan the terrain below for grumpy old men to help them fix the problem.

    Did you ever notice how grumpy old men not only like to complain, but also have an opinion on just about everything? It could be the weather, politics, religion, taxes, the price of things, or sports. It really doesn't matter what it is.You could ask a grumpy old man about the escalating price of alpaca sweaters due to a harsh winter in the Andes Mountains and he'd probably say,

"Those darn alpacas. We're all going to freeze our butts off this winter just because a bunch of hill-climbing, spitting, nasty critters ain't growing enough fur!"

      Grumpy old men also do a lot of puttering around. I'm not sure what that entails, but I think it means they drive their wives crazy, and take lots of naps. I noticed something unusual. Grumpy old men all seem to have kind, gentle, soft-spoken wives with thick white hair, an infectious laugh, and a penchant for making you feel at ease. The wives also have a way of making things grow, amazing skills involving hand-made quilts, and are masters of the art of baking delicious home-made pies. When they pass away, they are immediately nominated for Sainthood. I’m not sure if it's because they were such good people, or whether it was because they had somehow managed to live over fifty years with a grumpy old man.

    Mr. Wasserman, our grumpy old neighbor passed away a few years ago as a widower. I know that he was often opinionated, known to complain a little too much, set in his ways, stubborn, and may have even been called cantankerous by those who didn't know him well. The funny thing is, I remember him differently.

      I remember how gentle he was with his wife after her health began to fail. How even after she was gone he continued to water, fertilize and prune the rose bushes she loved so much. I can recall that old widow Brown who lived next to him always had her grass cut, leaves raked, snow shoveled, and her mail brought to her door every day. I remember a snowy winter storm when I was dealing with a bad back, and as I struggled to shovel my driveway, he showed up with a huge snow blower, or the time my wife's car wouldn't start, and he reattached a starter wire in five minutes flat.

    I went to his funeral and learned some things I didn't know. I found out that he had been a Marine veteran who had served his country with honor. He was extremely active in his church. He did all their maintenance work, sang in the choir, and his deep and melodious voice was legendary. The church was overflowing for his funeral with men and women with cars that ran like clockwork, lawnmowers with razor-sharp blades, doors that didn't squeak, toasters that shot golden brown bread four-feet into the air, and air conditioners so efficient that water froze on countertops.

    I know that Mr. Wasserman is now in a better place. Even so, I'm sure he's still fixing things, and doing his share of complaining. I guess I better get going. I just saw Mrs. Williams across the street with a carload full of mulch. She's six months pregnant and I hope she’s not planning on trying to haul all those bags by herself. Wait a minute. Is that the neighbor's mangy cat at my fish pond? Oh no; here comes that enormous, dog-shaped poop machine again. J-a-m-i-e ...... P-e-t-e-r-s-o-n.......! Those are flower beds, not your own personal short-cut. I think I'm just a little bit grumpier today.