Joel McCrankypants

 

I have become a crank. A curmudgeon. An annoyed human.

I say "have become" because I don't believe I have always been this irritated. As a matter of fact, I believe that for most of my life, in most circumstances, I manifested a more jovial, good-natured outlook.

Not these days, people.

Do you see the little hair that's jutting out of the top of my nose in the above cranky photograph? That is just one of the many annoyances contributing to my general crankiness. 

No worries, you say? Cut or shave it off, you say? Gee, why didn't I think of that? People, I go after that little wiry scamp every few days but every time I think I have eliminated the sneaky follicle, he pops back up like Michael Myers in Halloween.

 I tell you it's enough to make a jovial fellow cranky.

Trump has singlehandedly raised my crank-o-meter since 2015. Like many of you, I've had to endure about eight years of crank-inducing behavior from the world's most dangerous buffoon.Will my overall crankitude decrease once he faces a jury? I hope so as do the people who must suffer my ballooning crank levels daily.

Just the other day I was playing golf as usual, accompanied by two fine gentlemen I would consider friends. Normally, I don't bring up politics during golf, especially with folks who have a different view of the world from me. God knows, there are enough crank-inducing aspects to golf without introducing politics into the mix. But someone said something about ol' man Biden and off I went in full crank mode. By the end of the discussion we were all so steamed up, we each hit our longest drive of the round.

Speaking of golf, whoever is in the group ahead of me is a source for tremendous levels of crankiness. In this respect, I am much like my father, Sam, when he was driving. Sam Getman was one of the country's great cranks behind the wheel. To him every other motorist was a "bastard". Take a left turn? "Look at that bastard," he'd crankily proclaim. It didn't matter that the other driver did everything properly. In Sam's eyes he was a bastard. Pass Sam in the left lane, safely and properly? "Can you believe that bastard?" he'd complain. That's how I have become regarding the golf group in front of me. I spend most of my limited concentration focusing on them, watching for the most trivial pace of play or cart error. Ready to pounce on the slightest deviation from the way I think they should go about things. And when I spot someone taking too long to putt or a cart going where it's not supposed to, guess what I say:

"Look at those bastards." 

I'm a crank about other sports as well. The Boston Bruins recently elevated my dangerously high crank numbers to near emergency levels. This year I followed the Bruins closely, watching almost every one of their 82 regular season games. You can only imagine how thrilled Nan was at my Bruins obsession. Amazingly, I was rewarded with the single most successful hockey season ANY team has ever enjoyed in the nearly 100-year history of the National Hockey League. Like the rest of Bruins fandom, I looked forward to the Stanley Cup playoffs with great eagerness. But unlike most other Bruins fans, deep in the back of my enthusiasm, a smattering of crankiness stubbornly dwelt.

It manifested itself this way: How perfectly crank-affirming it would be for the Bruins to be bounced from the playoffs by the weakest team. And wouldn't you know that the Bruins, leading by a goal with a minute to go in the deciding game against the Florida Panthers, would give up the tying goal in that last minute and the losing overtime goal shortly thereafter. And the greatest single season in NHL history became just more grist for my cranky mill.

Yes, I'm ashamed to say that I have become a crank at my advanced age. I'm a walking cliche: the neighborhood curmudgeon. Mass shootings make me cranky. Thoughts and prayers in place of gun legislation really make me cranky. Governors telling teachers what they can say and teach raises my crankiness level to the boiling point. Private and for-profit schools stealing tax dollars from the public schools not only makes me cranky, it weakens what was once this country's greatest strength: the free public school system. So-called news networks promoting anti-democratic conspiracy theories adds to my general crank numbers. The state of American cinema...modern popular music...my 5-iron...Russia...Brad Pitt trying to sell me a coffee maker...hundreds of TV commercials for drugs that treat conditions I've never heard of...Arkansas...the way I feel when I try to get out of bed every morning...my balky computer...the 5,000 square-ft. houses I see under construction in Destin...Matt Gaetz...Dianne Feinstein...the mumbled, hurried dialogue I find unintelligible on many TV shows and movies...the deaths of many of my childhood sports heroes...the unremarkable deaths of people younger than me...Trump flags on some of the boats that cruise past our condo each day...my 6-iron...heck, lately my whole bag...my inability to stay awake for more than three pages of whatever riveting book I'm reading at bedtime...eagles that other people see and I don't...the overwrought concern that some people display over what happens in other people's nightclubs, bedrooms, and ovaries...people with yachts moaning about other people's use of food stamps...and, yes, drivers ahead of me making perfect, proper, legal left turns!

If it weren't for the two other beings sharing Mr. Crankypants' condo, who knows how high my crank-o-meter would jump.

Ain't life grand. Even for old cranks.