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# The Post I Started Last Wednesday
I seem to have become my father. I’m not sure when it happened, probably at the Playmate Tipping Point i Most annoying since I swore blind that it would never happen; what cruel universe do we occupy that would so disdainfully set aside the sincere and just oaths of teenagers, and indeed, render them null and void by the device of fulfilling the antithesis of the intended effect? But lo! I have become a grumpy bastard like my Dad.
Previously I thought I was spiky in my disdain for all things that crossed my path and failed to entertain. Now I realise that no, I’m just a grumpy bastard. Case in point, I once judged the quality of my daily commute by the number of suppressed homicidal rages at the injustice of being surrounded by fucking morons. Then one day, a few months ago, I realised it was actually easier to assume that impotent seething was the baseline; it was better to measure my trip by unexpected and unlikely moments of serenity versus actual acts of petty violence and retribution.
And nothing says growing old like the appearance of the petty revenge as a means of personal satisfaction. Gone are the days when I could rate how annoyed I was by the fantasy of violent karma inflicted upon the source of my vexation – just like Hol, there would be a rapidly escalating series of anguish starting with a paper cut and go all the way up to levels of pain like “thrown into the gears of carnival rides”. I can still do that, but I’m no longer able to say with some level of seriousness that I would weigh up if it is worth being locked up forever in order to carry out the punishment; I’ve got a family now and wouldn’t want my daughter to have to live with the indignity of being associated with the prize of He With The Most Cigarettes.
It was highlighted to me that I have passed into these realms of boring grumpiness — as opposed to interesting spikiness, I suppose — when tWM refused to ask me questions for her math homework because I yell at her. Allowing for the exageration I have so ably taught her and she so skillfully deploys while throwing a snit because I am forcing her to actually do her homework, I gather that by “yell” she means that I have little patience for pouty cries of “idunno” when queried as to what x might be in the equation -1=2/x. I more than just reasonably sure she has learned it before because I can remember teaching her the concepts of equations twice before. Even so, I suppose it is grumpy of me to suggest that maybe a some thinking could be applied to the problem rather than a stream of petulance and wondering what the boyfriend is doing ii.
Furthermore, my sister told my mother that I am snippy. Snippy! She had sent me an email asking me what I wanted for my birthday and I replied that seeing as how there is a ten hour time difference between her and I that maybe just once she could take the opportunity that the situation presents and get me exactly what I want, i.e. nothing. God knows no-one else has listened. D hounded me into giving her a shortlist of items by threatening to purchase another
Shit Machirabbit unless I did. I had to wrack my brain to come up with some items that were -if not things I wanted – things or marginal use that I could tolerate cluttering up my space when offset against the pointlessness of owning even more fucking clutter when I don’t even use all the clutter I already have.And lest there be some suggestion that the desire for nothing is just the externalised symptomns of internal conflict at the prospect of growing old, I turn 33 at my next birthday. That’s not old, irrespective of the median age of centrefolds of any magazine. I’ve got a good dozen years before motorcycles and dimwitted blonds with plastic tits start to appeal.
What?
i You know, when you are Officially Old – and thus a dirty old man – because you are now older than than the median age of the Playboy centrefolds of the preceding twelve months.
ii Oh yes, there is a boyfriend. No, I don’t particularly care. I don’t even particularly care that he is sixteen and she is fourteen. I have met him and he has a limp handshake. I believe that says it all. He also says he has heard much good of me, which clearly indicates that I’ve not been grumpy enough. And he calls. A lot. If this ends up like the collect calls from the boyfriend in National Lampoon’s European Vacation, I may well just carry out the associated threat.
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# re: The Post I Started Last Wednesday
...sitting here chuckling away…
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# re: The Post I Started Last Wednesday
Is that the same chuckle you were making while you watched the crab tribes sweep aside the remnants of the trilobyte civilisation?
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# re: The Post I Started Last Wednesday
I think you officially qualify as a Grumpy Old Man—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumpy_Old_Men_(TV_series)
but age has nothing to do with it.
There was a Grumpy Old Women tv show as well, but it was just whinging. They just didn’t get what grumpiness actually is.
Also, I was discussing last night what to do with presents you get that you neither want or need and how long you can wait before dumping them in a bin; and how completely annoying the whole present process is. (I think that was an episode of the TV program as well).
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# re: The Post I Started Last Wednesday
Happy Birthday you old plonker!!!! Answer me this – if you have become your father, has your golf game improved? Are you sure this grumpiness is not just ‘hormones’...
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# re: The Post I Started Last Wednesday
You know how they say “Hell is other people”? I disagree.
Hell is an ∞-round game of golf.
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209 days since 22/10/2011