If you have seen any of my numerous posts about dolls or old books or even, you guessed it, Pez dispensers, you know how badly I am gifted with hoarding disorder. You know the disease. Every old string-saving grandpa or scrap-booking maiden aunt you had as a kid had it. Piles and piles of useless and pointless things all neatly stacked and sorted somewhere in the house, or possibly garage… lurking like a monster of many pieces waiting to take over the whole house.
I can’t help it. Collections have to be completed. If you see it and you don’t already have it, you must possess it. Twenty-seven cents short of the full price with tax included? Go out to the car and dig in the cup holder. Oops! Can’t part with those particular State Quarters. Will they take that many pennies? Have to try.
Lately I have been victimized by a combination of my disorder and the fact that Toys-R-Us is a convenient restroom stop on the rush-hour drive along I-35 to pick up the Princess at her high school in Carrollton, Texas and my son Henry at his school in Lewisville, Texas. It is a killer two hours and I need to go potty at the halfway point. And I can’t make my way to the restroom without passing the Pez dispenser display. And I can’t pass the Pez dispenser display without… well, you know.
What can I say? I’m diabetic. I have to visit the restroom frequently.
And they do look good on my bookshelves with a lot of the other junk I collect.
And not all of these are new, bought some time this school year. In fact, not most of them.
And they only cost a couple of dollars each.
And I do resist the urge to buy one once in a while… honest, I really do.
And see here? Only Minnie Mouse and Pluto on this shelf are new. And how could I leave this collection without Minnie and Pluto?
And it’s not like butterfly collecting, which I shamefully admit I did as a kid. You don’t kill and mount Pez dispensers. Although I admit, I really don’t know for sure how their factory works.
But I also have to admit, Pez dispensers aren’t the only thing that turns my collecting urge up to the highest possible settings.
So don’t hate me for hoarding. If you’re worried, all of these things are available in stores too. And I have worked on my photographicalizing skills a bit to share them with you. And who knows where these treasures will end up when I pass on to the cartoonist’s paint box in the sky? My daughter has vowed not to let them end up in a landfill somewhere. Somebody will play with them and love them when I’m finally done. MAYBE EVEN FUTURE GRANDCHILDREN. There is a possibility, you know… always a possibility.
Catch a Falling Star 
Cranky Old Coots Complain and Don’t Care
Yes, I am a coot. I became a coot in 2014 when I retired. I have the hair in the ears to prove it. I sometimes forget to wear pants. The dog is learning to hide from me on days when my arthritis makes me cranky.
So I am a practicer of the ancient art of being a cranky old coot. I have opinions. I share them with others foolishly. And I am summarily told to, “Shut up, you danged old coot!” And, of course, I don’t shut up because that would be a violation of number five in the by-laws of cootism. Obnoxiousness is our only reason for still being alive.
Lately, my group of coots on Facebook (who call themselves a “pack” like wolves, but, in truth, a group of coots is called an “idiocy”) are talking about politics… very loudly salted with firmly held opinions, beliefs, and bad words in several languages. I mean, it’s texting each other on memes we disagree about, but we do it LOUDLY, like that, in all caps. We also do it in such an infuriating manner because, if no one ever bothers to tell us to “Shut the hell up!” we will begin to suspect we have actually died and gone to purgatory where we are still being obnoxious, but nobody knows we are doing it. That is rubbing coot fur in the wrong direction.
The radical right (otherwise known as coot paradise) have been cooting up a storm about school shootings and gun control of late. They have more or less turned their ire on me because, knowing I was a school teacher, they have seized on the Coot in Chief’s notion of arming teachers to protect schools. Obviously, a majority of old coots agree that requiring a few “volunteer” teachers to conceal carry and learn how to handle a school shooter crisis situation with a gun instead of the way teachers are actually trained and practiced on handling such a situation, is the only economical way to defend schools from crazed lunatics with assault weapons. Of course, it is definitely more economical than hiring full-time police officers to handle security because “volunteer” teachers does not mean that they are necessarily willing to do it, but rather that they are doing it without pay. And of course, they shout at me things like, “Why don’t you just admit that you are too scared and unpatriotic to carry a gun as a teacher, and cowardly allow some female teacher with a big pistol to step in and do the job for you?” That is a very coot thing to say, and is hard to adequately counter, because if you try to argue using logic other than coot-logic, like the notion that since a majority of teachers in this country are female, you are asking women who are fierce enough to do the job (and I have known more than a few who would take it on no matter how hopeless their prospects) to take a handgun that the principal bought at Walmart with money from the Coke machine in the hall and face down a suicidal maniac with an assault rifle, you will not even be heard over the cacophony of coot braying and chest-thumping, let alone be understood.
And, for some reason, coots love Trump. Maybe because they feel he is truly one of them. He is older than dirt. He has an epically bad comb-over to hide his bald spot. He says bad words very loudly in front of women, children, and everybody. He says, “Believe me,” especially when telling lies. And he’s not afraid to fart in public and blame it on the dog. I admit to insulting Trump in front of them only because I like to see coot faces fold up in extra wrinkles, and coot heads turn various shades of angry red and apoplectic purple.
So, yes. I am a coot. Not proud to be one… that I can remember, but a coot nonetheless.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, goofy thoughts, grumpiness, gun control, humor, Liberal ideas, oldies, Paffooney, teaching
Tagged as coots, gun control and coots, obnoxious coots, old coots