Taming the Curmudgeon Within

Above The Timberline

by Wayne Mergler

ANCHORAGE, AK—(Weekly Hubris)—11/8/10—A young starlet interviewed in a magazine this week says that she is very attracted to older men.

Really?

She goes on to cite Sean Connery and Robert Redford as examples of sexy men who have grown old and are as sexy as ever. I have heard such talk from women before. And I have never for a minute believed it.

My friend Linda has often mentioned Cary Grant as the perfection of the mature male. Yes, Cary Grant was indeed incredibly handsome. And, yes, he did indeed grow more handsome as he got older. His wavy black hair segued into wavy white hair, eventually, which was actually an improvement (as if he needed any). And, yes, his waistline remained trim, his suits remained impeccable; he never developed wrinkles, except for that attractive deepening of the laugh lines in his healthily tanned face that made him look ruddy and manly. Hell, Cary Grant even famously said that he wished he were Cary Grant, too.

Another friend of mine, Cathy, gushes about the mature Robert Wagner as the epitome of suave hunkiness. My own wife went gaga over the aging (now late) Paul Newman. To hear them all talk, there is nothing more devilishly attractive than a mature male.

My response to all this is simple: What? Are these women NUTS?

Have they never actually lived with an aging man? Have they never LOOKED at him? Have they never listened to what he has to say? Not to mention the snoring, farting, groaning, and general hostility that emits from most men of mature years?

Try, though I might, I am usually unable to find even a modicum of charm in most men my age.

Sure, Cary and Paul and Sean and the Bobs were hot, I admit, but I wonder what their wives would have to say. I suspect they would be less inclined to sing their praises. And I’m betting that those guys, just like the rest of us, suddenly had hair sprouting in their ears and on their backs and out of that gross-looking mole that popped up out of nowhere. And what about chronic halitosis and flatulence? Varicose veins? Impotence? A half-dozen spare tires around the middle? I’m sorry, but the average older guy just is not that appealing.

Trust me. I KNOW what I am talking about. I am one.

And, sadly, I rarely meet a guy my own age now that I can stand.

Mind you, I know that I am probably igniting the wrath (or at the very least, the annoyance) of my contemporaries, but, jeez, every old guy I know is just downright pissed about everything. Anything. LIFE annoys them. This is hardly an attractive quality.

What IS it about older men? What happens to us after we have passed our 60th birthdays? Something happens. I have heard some discussion about male menopause, that the cessation of testosterone in many men leads to angry, curmudgeonly behavior, though that seems odd. I would think the opposite would occur. I would think we’d all be passive and happy and be learning to crochet. I mean, when a dog is castrated, he usually becomes less aggressive, doesn’t he?

I work in a bookstore at the Anchorage airport. Fortunately, I only work part time. I couldn’t stand to be there more than a few hours a week. Into this store come many tourists over the summer. Often they are elderly women traveling happily with other elderly women. Or they are married couples. In the latter case, she is usually lovely, excited to be in this exciting place, enchanted by the beauty of the scenery, eager to chat and befriend others on the journey.

He, however, is pissed. He is always pissed.

He is tired and grumpy and everything is too expensive and there is a plot among Alaskan retailers: we all just want his money. And, by cracky, he ain’t a gonna give it up! He hates the food, it’s too damned cold outside, and he didn’t want to leave home, anyway. Often his wife will smile sadly at me and say, “He doesn’t travel well.” (My unspoken response is always something like: “No sh*t, Lady!”)

One woman explained to me that her husband never wants to travel because he is on unfamiliar turf when he is away from home; he feels powerless, not in control.

“It’s like when men don’t want to ask for directions,” she explained. “If they ask for directions, they feel like they are not in charge. That’s  the way he feels the whole time he is away from home.”

A pair of local Alaskan writers have written two charming books for children that sell very well in the bookstore. One is called When Grandma and Grandpa Went to Alaska.

The other is called, simply, When Grandma Went to Alaska.

“Hey,” I said to the authors. “What happened to Grandpa? Did you kill him off?”

“No,” they responded. “Grandpa doesn’t travel.”

And it is true. Older women travel; married couples travel (though he hates every minute of it), but older men by themselves simply do not go anywhere.

Now, I am an exception to that. I love to travel and am ready to go anywhere, any time. Once, not too long ago, I won in a contest two tickets to Hawaii. My wife could not go with me because of previous commitments, so I thought I would look among my male contemporaries for companionship. Nobody would go. (One guy colorfully said, “I ain’t lost a thing in Hawaii!”) I ended up going by myself. (And, yes, it does occur to me that maybe nobody wanted to go with old curmudgeonly me.)

I teach a class in literature for senior citizens at the university here in Anchorage. My students are all over 55. They are also all lovely, bright, enthusiastic, and eager to learn. And they are also all women.

“Where are the men?” I asked them. “Where are your husbands?”

To which one wryly replied, “Oh, they don’t need to take a class; they already know everything!”

My friend Sue is now a brilliant, alert, and dynamic woman of 90 years. I asked her a while ago if she could explain to me what was wrong with men over 60. She said that men over 60 were once used to having all the power. And now they are losing it. They are impotent in almost every way.

“There was a time,” she said, “when just being male meant that you had power. Now, being male is not as all-powerful a state as it used to be. And, just by growing old, they are growing less powerful. They are becoming marginalized now in their own culture. And they don’t like it. They are pissed. They are angry and frightened and hurt. Their wives don’t suffer as they do. They never had that kind of power. As women, they are used to a certain amount of marginalization. They have learned to handle it and to accept it. Their husbands have a much harder time of it. Women grow old and lose their beauty; men grow old and lose their power. Which is the bitterest pill?”

Ah, Sue, you have lost nothing at 90. But, I digress.

I did read somewhere that, when women are unhappy, they go inward; they blame themselves. When men are angry or hurt or unhappy, they go outward; they blame others. Maybe that is where the grumpiness comes from. Everything is everybody else’s fault.

It is true that the Grumpy Old Man has become such a recognizable figure in our culture that he has become a stereotype. I remember the two “Grumpy Old Men” movies, which starred Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as old men so annoyed at the world that they were in a constant state of rage. And yet, they came across somehow as cute and funny and ultimately lovable. I have not noticed that the real world finds these guys cute, funny, or lovable—just really irritating. And, most outrageous of all, Matthau and Lemmon ended up in these films with Sophia Loren and Ann-Margret, respectively. Now I know THAT never happens!

I remember when I was a kid, our resident grumpy old man was Mr. West. Mr. West was the terror of the neighborhood. He did indeed, just like the stereotypes now proclaim, chase us all out of his yard if we dared to set foot on his obsessively maintained lawn. I remember once he chased me for about half a block, snapping a newspaper at my flying feet. Sometimes he would squirt us with his garden hose if we happened to walk by while he was watering the lawn. He never smiled; he only grumbled. And I remember my mother telling me once, after Halloween, that his wife always baked homemade brownies and cookies for the trick-or-treaters but was sad because no kids ever came to their house. Hell, no! We weren’t idiots! Mr. West was scary enough when it wasn’t Halloween. We certainly weren’t going to go there THAT night.

“Just be nice to him,” my mother would say to me. “He’s an old man. You’ll be old, too, some day.”

Never, I thought passionately. Never, never, never, never. I’d rather be dead.

But my greatest inspiration for taming the curmudgeon within me just might come from my oldest friend, Alan. I have known Alan for over 50 years. He is six months older than I am and is remarkably unchanged since we were 16. Alan is the obvious and undeniable exception to everything I have said about old guys in the previous paragraphs. He is not a curmudgeon. He is not a grumpy old man (except, surprisingly, when he spends a lot of time around me). In fact, Alan is the opposite of the grumpy old man. He is the Pollyanna of the geriatric set. His secret seems to be that he never watches TV. I mean, he never watches it. Not even the news or a favorite comedy special or anything. He has taught me that, maybe, if we all just turned off our TV sets, we’d all be in better moods. I believe it. Alan not only never watches TV, but he rarely reads the news, and manages to stay blissfully ignorant about pop culture. He is famous for saying astonishing things like, “Who is Paris Hilton?” Or, more recently, “I’ve heard something about a Tea Party? What is that? Do they drink tea?”

Mind you, I think not knowing those things is actually an admirable thing, but it is nevertheless astounding to me that one can live in the 21st century and be so unaware of them.

Alan admits that he “lives in a cave” and is blissfully unaware of much outside it. He likes it that way. But, in fact, Alan is out and about in the world in a far more hands-on manner than many of us are. He does things. He rides his bicycle around lakes and along greenbelts; he eats in fine restaurants. He goes almost every night to concerts and plays; ballets and operas. But he rarely goes anywhere where people are being contentious. He surrounds himself with pleasant things and pleasant people. His view of the world remains optimistic, stable, sane, and calm. In his world, the Cleavers and the Nelsons still live harmoniously down the block. In fact, he only seems to get irritable when I tell him that that world doesn’t exist and, furthermore, never did. That seems to piss him off.

Sometimes I wonder how anyone as smart as Alan is (and he is smart) can be so obtuse, naive, and clueless. Yet, there is method to his madness. He manages to keep from his life anything that troubles him. Television, particularly with its political shouting, anger, and incivility, upsets him, so he wisely keeps it out of his life. That seems so simple. Why I can’t I do that? But somehow I can’t. I am afraid of missing something if I don’t listen to the latest political debate on MSNBC. If another Hitler came to power, Alan would just ignore him. And, oddly, it would work for him. For me, denial just gets me into further trouble. But for Alan, it is indeed just a river in Egypt.

But I think he is on to something. He is not aware that he has grown old. Nor is he aware that the rest of us have also. He maintains old friendships better and more faithfully than anyone I’ve ever known, and, in his eyes, we are all the same kids we always were. When he looks at me, for example, he doesn’t see the paunchy, bald old curmudgeon that I have become. He sees the cute, dark-haired, laughing 16-year-old boy that I used to be, the one he remembers so well.

I envy him. I see the warts. He never does. His cup is so half-full that it threatens to bubble over.

So maybe that is the secret to growing old gracefully—

Turn off the TV!

Listen to the music you love.

Hang out with the people you love.

Read and re-read the books you love.

Avoid politics and discussions about politics.

Develop a blindness to the faults of your friends.

Trust in whatever or whomever has made this world, and believe, as “The Desiderata” tell us, that the world “no doubt is unfolding as it should.”

I am going to try all this. I really am.

But, right now, I have to go: I hear some damn kids in my yard.