Pearls: Theory on getting old and grumpy

EDITORIAL MUG: Matt Pearl

I’m young. Youngish.

I do, however, frequently learn more about what the old folks used to mean when they said things. I guess that when I was growing up, I just thought all old people were grumpy; along with aging, I assumed that folks just naturally grew a bit more cantankerous.

As it turns out, I was right. Rightish.

The years have begun to teach me that change can be a difficult notion to accept – but I have also learned that it’s not specifically change that can feel so threatening. Instead, I have started to realize that a person gets to middle age, and begins to see that he/she has invested a lot of time, work and money into their old world. And right when you’ve put your sweat and tears into building a life, the generation following you – the folks who just turned 20 and know everything – begin to see your opinions as obsolete. They see your ideas as antiquated. You’re not cool anymore.

That’s life: just when you get it figured out, people stop caring about your perspective.

You can’t go back. You can’t be cool again. If you try, the young folks will see right through you as a phony.

And it’s only going to get worse. You actually get old, and the younger people who follow will judge negatively every step your generation ever took, and condemn you for having ruined the world.

The only comfort is this: those 20-year-olds will be in their 40s, 50s, 60s someday, and they’ll have to listen to the generation below them roll their eyes (Truly! I can hear it when people are rolling their eyes at me!) at their epic failures.

And they wonder why age makes us grumpy. I didn’t know anything when I was 20; the more I learned, the grumpier I got. The American ideal is for us each to find our career, to work hard, bring up our families if we choose, retire, travel and die. We focus on work during those years after we have found our career paths, and it becomes engrained in our minds that work and effort should be worth something, that our value in society should grow as we accomplish more and more.

Sometimes it works out that way. But if you don’t make enough money, folks look down on you. And if you make too much, they call you greedy, or they say you cheated to get it. We might all be better off just not listening to folks who have too much unsought criticism to offer.

Yes, I am rapidly approaching my grumpy years, I fear. I enjoy my wife and my kids, and I try not to be continually grouchy with them. But in the course of a day, if I run across some outspoken person whose ideas are just terrible, or if I have to listen to some fool’s bad takes on society while I’m watching TV, or if I have to buy gasoline at all, it’s hard for my mood not to suffer.

I wonder if Democrats and Republicans know how much they’re making me dislike them, and how much worse it gets every time I hear them blame inflation and gas prices and the Ukraine and Covid on each other. It’s like listening to my kids fight over the TV, except in those disputes I can just turn off the blasted thing. This Republicrat garbage is endless: there isn’t even a mute button.

So I guess I’m just a grumpy man in his 40s now. It was bound to happen. Don’t take it too personally if I grumble out a comment on your Facebook post, or if you see me (or hear me, as the case may be) roll my eyes during a news commentary.

And if I get too cranky, just come and tell me to take it down a notch. I’ll be at the pond throwing bread to the geese and avoiding everyone.

Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City, Albany and Grant City.