Coot Meditations

Sitting here at Hilton Head on vacation (what is retirement but vacation, lawn mowing, house repair, and so forth) meditation of some of things that define coots.  

For the past three days, I have been more and more aware that when one becomes and old coot, (around seventy or so) an inner switch is triggered in the body that enforces a rule that whenever you stand up after sitting for more than fifteen minutes, you had better have already identified the nearest restroom because you have a maximum of twenty five seconds to get to that restroom because your body is going to start using it, even if you aren’t there yet.  Fortunately this use is usually limited to dribbles that are not visible to the general public, but are sufficiently identifiable to you that you feel an immediate kinship to most of the two and three year olds in the room.

Other coot identifying markers:  1.  All the servers with which you come into contact in a restaurant who are women, identify the specials of the house in a soprano voice that is no longer heard unless is is a operatic aria levels.  When you ask the female server to repeat, she looks at you as if you were a two year old (see the identifying marker in paragraph one) and repeats it slowly, and loudly, but still in that darn soprano register that your ears no longer register.  Everyone in the restaurant now smiles and looks at you with pity (or sometimes irritation).

2.  (This is less universal, but common) When you walk through a store or other business establishment there is a point where a certain area in your lower back speaks to you in a language that you immediately understand, and says to you “SIT DOWN!!”  This usually happens in a part of the business establishment where there is nowhere to sit except on a merchandise display or other place where the merchant would rather not have you sit.    If you do not sit down, you immediately shift from homo erectus to homo bent-overus. You also shift from  “step lively” to “shuffle” in you general demeanor.  It is true, that carrying and using a cane (a strong one with a good rubber tip) can sometime prevent this state until you can make it to a bench or other appropriate seating place.

I will discuss some other symptoms of coothood a bit later, because sometimes that switch discusses in the first paragraph doesn’t wait for you to stand up.