Getting Riled Up While Parked In a Lazyboy

Getting Riled Up While Parked In a Lazyboy

Getting older is such a drag, and I really do mean drag, i.e., So many reasons not to do something; Looking longingly at a Playboy pin-up; Wondering if there will be enough money to bury your wrinkled old ass; The humiliation of young people shooting you the bird during your driving experience. I could fill a few pages with this kind of draggy stuff, but you get the picture. I am also apprehensive about writing this piece in the first place because when and if a young person ever reads this, they might become frightened that this is how they will end up one day (if they are lucky, that is). After reading this piece, they (young people) might even be inclined to uphold the Bob Dylan advisement to “never trust anyone over 30”. Oh, by the way, Robert Allen Zimmerman, Bob Dylan, will be 68 on 24 May, and it’s hard to believe old “All of the Tired Horses” Bob would ever say; Never trust anyone over 70. No, he wouldn’t say that, would he? However, I would hazard a guess that even good old “Blowing in the Wind” Bob has come to realize that old age is a moving target, i.e., as you get older the notion of old is an age more advanced than yours, and getting a young person to trust you is not part of the aging agenda anyway. The agenda of old age is to remain upright and on the sunny side of the grass for as long as possible and staying the hell out of the way while doing it. But I digress. I was just thinking, while staying the hell out of the way, how it seems to me that nowadays people seemed inclined to be angry a lot. They seem to be angry at every thing. Things big and small, important and trivial, personal and impersonal, etc., you name it and chances are there is an angry person out there ready to cause a ruckus about it. I’ll swear that a lot of people examine every word spoken to them to see if there is some reason they should be insulted, disrespected, or just plain ticked-off and they are always eager to be angry and confrontational about it. Because I am getting older, I tried to think back to earlier times in order to determine if people were as angry then as they seem to be now. I can’t really recall people ever being as angry as now even if my “Tired old Horses” brain can’t recall reality as good as it used to. God only knows that people in days gone by certainly had much more cause to be angry than people nowadays because life was rather rough then and not nearly as good and convenient as modern living is now. Perhaps I should clarify that last remark. When I say things are much better in the modern world, I meant from a physical perspective of just staying alive and getting enough to eat while hoping you didn’t wear out your body with physical labor, you know, stuff like that. I guess a case could be made that living is more stressful now than in the older and simpler times because we have nuclear war hanging over our heads, terrorism, investments and IRAs, endless gadgets to get and maintain, cars to constantly feed, HD Television and on and on. Living during modern stressful times could certainly make a case for being angry in general because things that cause stress in today’s world seem to be beyond anyone’s personal control. Older things, like staying alive, getting enough to eat and the like, were more physical things and were mainly in one’s personal control. Perhaps it’s the not being in control of our own lives that is causing people to be angry all of the time. That very well could be true, but I think there is something else just as fundamental that is causing all of the anger. Believe it or not, I think we are too connected nowadays. E-mail, texting, 24-hour news, cell phones in our pockets, political correctness, credit cards, goggle and on and on. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing all of the time. For example, do I really need to know that the Tutsi are hacking to death every Hutu they can find in Africa, or is it Hutus killing Tutsi? I remember when I lived in on the north shore of Hawaii many years ago we had no TV, one FM radio station and did not receive a newspaper. We walked on the beach, read books and were not angry with anyone mainly because we didn’t know what other people were doing most of the time. Here is something else to think about. Remember when we used to write letters to communicate with people? It took a lot of time to compose a thoughtful letter. Enough time in fact that when one reread the letter before posting, one would have time to remove any unintended offensive rhetoric before it could do harm and cause a person to be angry. Now we can bang away with “quick fingers” on e-mail or a text message and the communication can be in the recipient’s domain before regret can have its say and save the day. I try not to be angry today but Lawyers, Flim Flam politicians, Hedge funds, Bailouts, religious fanatics of every stripe would make any thoughtful person angry and knowing every possible detail about these and endless other crappy things causes me to be as angry as everyone else. Being old also causes me to notice things like this “everybody is always angry” thing and small wonder young folks like to steer a course around old fuddy-duddies mouthing off about such esoteric things. Well excuse me as I recline back in my Lazyboy, get my “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” brain back into gear, and receive my nightly anger fix by clicking onto Lou Dobbs Tonight.