Old Geezers

    My granddaughter laughed at my comment as we pushed our way past a table of eight or ten coffee drinkers in Jake and Dorothy’s on a warm morning last week.   “What did you call them, Ma?”   She asked.

            I said. “There sit some “old geezers.”

            “Geezers? What’s an old geezer?”

            Oh that’s just a slang expression for any old man, I told my 22-year-old grandchild.  Old geezers are easy to spot.  You’ll likely see them gathered together in bunches. When they stand together watching a parade, old geezers are the ones standing a little taller and saluting the flag as it passes by.   When they hear the national anthem at a football game, they’re the ones holding their hands over their hearts. Old geezers are frugal.  They remember the Great Depression and how hard money was to come by.  They don’t waste anything.  They remember WW11; most of them fought in it.  They can talk about Guadalcanal, Normandy, and Hitler.  They know who Jimmy Doolittle was and they had friends who died in the Bataan Death March.  They remember the first Atomic explosion, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Jet Age, and Armstrong walking on the Moon.

            Younger geezers still wear the battle scars of Vietnam.

            If you meet an old geezer on the road in his battered pickup truck, he’ll stick up a finger in greeting.  If you meet him on the street, he’ll likely tip his hat, to show he thinks you’re a lady.

            Geezers hold the door for the next person, and when walking with a woman, a geezer will make sure she is on the inside, to shield her from any debris thrown from the street by a passing car. 

            Geezers are embarrassed when someone curses within earshot of women and children.  Old geezers usually watch sports or game shows on television because many other shows are violent or “dirty”.  That’s the same reason that very few geezers are ever seen in a movie theater seat.  They don’t care for stabbings, shootings, vampires, cannibals, explosions, open sex, nudity, robbery, murder, and the rest of what today’s movie goer sees on the screen, They have moral courage and the courage of their convictions.  They’re often the only ones staring down those making offensive remarks or acting in an offensive manner.

            Geezers brag a lot about their sons and daughters, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  They enjoy soccer, little league, and T-ball.  They don’t much care for dance or piano recitals but they’ll go if there’s a grandchild in it. You know, Chrissy, this country needs a few more old geezers.  We need their ideas of what is fair and honest and decent.  We need their common sense.  We need them because of their experience and knowledge and their high ideals that helped bring this country through every difficulty that is always just around the corner.

            The geezers of past generations wrote the Declaration of Independence and then fought a mighty nation to win that independence.  Geezers sat down to write the United States Constitution, a document that still holds true more than 200 years later.  Old Geezers helped this country through its growth in the 1800’s, and fought all the wars our people have endured.

            Thank God for all the old geezers everywhere.  You better pray that we never run out of them. 

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