
I came to Texas from Iowa. I was well-versed in how to speak Iowegian. (I was, don’t-ya-know, and spoke it fluently, you-betcha.)
Then I arrived, fresh-faced and ready to change the world as a twenty-five-year-old teacher, and began working in a mostly Hispanic middle school in deep South Texas. Dang! Whut language do they speak? (Yes, I know… Spanish. But my students straight from Mexico couldn’t understand the local lingo either. South Texas Spanish and Castilian Spanish from Mexico are not the same language.) I couldn’t talk to the white kids either. It is possible to communicate with Texicans, but it took me years to learn the language. It takes more than mere usage of “ya’ll” and “howdy”.

You can probably see what I mean when you look at these fake quotes based on the things real Texicans actually once said to me. Of course, I can be accused of being a racist by interpreting things this way. Texicans are concerned that you understand that they are not racists. They merely rebel against being “politically correct”. Apparently the political-correctness police give them all sorts of unfair harassment about speaking their minds the way they always have. I should note, however, that I had to use a quote from Bubba rather than Dave Winchuk. Dave is so anti-political-correctness concerned that he regularly said to me things with so much racial heat in them that they would even melt the faces off white people. Face-melting is bad. If you don’t believe me, re-watch the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And to speak Texican, you must actually learn a thing or two about guns. Yes, Texas is an open-carry State. Apparently, Second Amendment rights are the most important rights in the Constitution. My two sons grew up in Texas; the oldest is a Marine, and the younger is in the Air Force. Guns are important to them. I have those same arguments with former students, too. I have learned to say the right things so that they will tolerate my unholy pacifist ideas about how the world might be safer if everybody didn’t have five guns in the waistbands of their underpants. So gun-stuff ends up as a part of the Texican language I have learned to speak.
The point of it all is, language is a fascinating thing that grows and changes and warps and regresses. I love it. I try to master it. And the mistakes I make usually sound purty funny.












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