Look, if the guy in front of me is driving slowly, there's not much I can do, so stop tailgating me

This happens to me all the time on my drive to work. I take mainly one-lane (each way) side streets, most of which have posted speed limits of 35MPH and on which the majority of drivers do about 40, maybe a tad faster.

The system works well for everyone involved until one person decides to go under 30, even on the driest, clearest day when driving conditions are optimal.

A line of cars quickly forms behind them, but they are insistent on proceeding well under the speed limit.

Not the worst thing in the world, but admittedly a tad annoying.

Quite often I will be the car directly behind the offending dawdler. I will move a bit to the side so the other drivers can see what's going on, and to convey the message, "Hey, it's not me, it's that guy. What are ya gonna do?"

Yet even when I do this, the car behind me will often position itself about 6 inches from my back bumper, as if tailgating me is going to make Slow Poke Rodriguez speed up.

Why? Why would anyone do this? What do you think you're accomplishing riding my butt when I have absolutely no control over the speed we're going?

Back. Off.

I hate to generalize here, but almost every time this happens, I will look in my rear view mirror and notice that the driver behind me is a young person.

Pardon my old man ranting, but what exactly are they teaching these kids in driving school?

Ease up on the gas pedal, Sophia, and put some more distance between you and me. You're accomplishing nothing.

You know, most of the time my blog posts are meant to convey something funny, touching or otherwise positive. It's not often I complain, or at least not often I end with a complaint.

But that's all I have today, along with the following bit of advice:

If you're someone who does this, stop it.

Yes, I'm looking at you, Liam. You're not getting to first-period Biology any faster by rear ending me.

10 older-person things I never thought I would do, yet here I am doing them

 

It's just a Snapchat filter, but this may as well be how I look these days.

1. Paying close attention to the identity of birds that land on our back deck
   
   
2. Finding myself suddenly and randomly thinking about insurance coverage
   
   
3. Making a little noise every time I rise from a seated position (Note: A noise from my mouth, I mean, not from...other places on my body.)
   
   
4. Watering my grass every day (Another note: I only water the two spots in the backyard where we planted grass seed this spring. Give me another 10 years and I'll likely be doing the whole lawn.)
   
   
5. Making a full and protracted stop at a stop sign as an act of defiance to the guy who is tailgating me even though I should be the bigger person and ignore him BUT IT'S 25MPH ON THESE STREETS, SIR, NOT 40 AND YOU NEED TO SLOW DOWN
   
   
6. Related to that, saying (loudly, even when I'm the only one in the car) "Nice stop!" to someone who rolls through a stop sign. On occasion, I've also been known to throw in a "Nice turn signal!" to anyone who fails to use theirs.
   
   
7. Being unable to keep myself from saying things like, "Yes, but at least back in my day, popular music had MELODY and INTELLIGIBLE LYRICS."
   
   
8. Getting visibly angry at the weeds growing through the cracks in our driveway
   
   
9. Earnestly wondering whether I should take up the bassoon (this thought has occurred to me way more often than I care to admit)
   
   
10. Telling the same stories and jokes to the same people over and over, having reached the bottom of what I had assumed was an endless well of charming anecdotes in my brain

I must be getting older and softer when it comes to the extended celebration of Christmas

For many years, I stuck to a hard and fast rule whereby I would never, under any circumstances, listen to Christmas music before December 1st.

I wasn't being a Scrooge or anything. I just felt the tendency to extend the celebration of Christmas back into November (or, in some cases, even starting in October) kind of cheapened the holiday. I have a lot of great memories from Decembers past and didn't want to water down future memories by making Christmas two months long.

If that makes sense.

Now, however, I'm not so strict. I've been listening to Christmas music since Thanksgiving Day. I haven't minded seeing decorations go up "early" on houses and in stores. And I've generally been much more OK with a somewhat longer holiday season than I was in the past.

So what changed? What switch flipped?

I hate to say it, but I think it's an age thing. Not that I'm ancient at 54, but there are a lot fewer things on which I'm "hard and fast" than there used to be.

If people want to listen to Christmas music in October or November – or July, for that matter – where's the harm?

Heck, if I want to listen to Christmas music any time of year, who cares? Christmas is what you make of it, and a rousing chorus of "Sleigh Ride" six weeks before December 25th will only negatively affect my experience of the holiday if I allow it to.

Granted, "Jingle Bells" in mid-summer still feels a little strange to me. But hey, you do you.

I'm trying not to let the old man in, but modern travel makes it difficult

Country singer Toby Keith recorded a song called "Don't Let the Old Man In" that was apparently inspired by Clint Eastwood. The two were playing golf together in a charity event a few years ago when Clint remarked that he was about to turn 88. Toby asked what kept him going, and Clint's reply was "I get up every day and don't let the old man in."

I still have a long way to 88 (or 93, which is Clint Eastwood's current age), but I'm already familiar with the concept of not letting the old man in.

At some point in middle age, it gets very easy to be cranky. For many of my fellow Gen-Xers, surliness and general irritability are a point of pride. They revel in the old man (even the women).

Not me. Or at least, I don't want to be grouchy and disagreeable. The old man still makes unwanted appearances every day, and I have to make an effort to push him back into his corner and maintain a optimistic, cheerful outlook.

At no time does this get tested more than when I have to travel, and specifically when I have to travel for work.

Leisure travel is fun, and generally speaking when I do it, Terry is with me. The travel experience, like everything else in life, is a lot more enjoyable when she is there.

But work travel tends to be a lonely solo venture. For many who travel as a requirement of their jobs, there comes a time when it stops being fun.

For me I think it happened about 10 years ago. I'll still travel as much as the company needs me to, but I don't mind being in a position where I can sometimes go to a person on my team and say, "Hey, how do you feel about going to Milwaukee next week in my place?"

I did recently undertake a business trip to Milwaukee, as a matter of fact, and let me say here it's a very nice town. My problem with travel rarely has anything to do with the destination. It's getting there and getting home.

Compared with many places I've visited, a trip to Milwaukee is a breeze, involving just one flight and a rental car. But my one-hour flight to Chicago was crowded, hot, sweaty and generally uncomfortable. There was turbulence, which normally doesn't bother me but feels 10 times worse when the plane's air conditioning system leaves something to be desired.

Then there's O'Hare Airport, which as airports go is probably not too bad but is still huge and takes time to navigate. Getting to the rental car area feels like I've covered the distance from Cleveland to Chicago all over again.

Then there's the rigmarole of getting the car and driving the 70+ miles to Milwaukee, checking into the hotel, unpacking, etc.

If you're someone who doesn't work a white-collar job, you're reading this and wondering, "Where exactly is the problem?" And you're right. There is no problem there. This is all first-world whining by the old man, and I sometimes have to pull him aside and give him the "hey, it beats real work" lecture.

I didn't think this would be an issue for me at the comparatively tender age of 53, but I guess I'm going to have to spend the rest of my days taming the old man. I find him a lot easier to control when I'm at home than, say, when I'm sitting at the airport gate and my phone tells me the flight is "slightly" delayed and I'll be stuck reading my book and drinking Starbucks for another two hours before we even board.

In those instances, I allow the old man exactly three minutes to quietly seethe, then I order him back into his cage. That's probably more time than he deserves.

I wish school didn't start so early, but I get why it does

At the risk of turning this into a "BACK IN MY DAY" old man rant, I will point out that my youngest two children go back to school tomorrow, which is a full three weeks earlier than they would have returned using the system under which I grew up.

That system – also known as "The Right System" – dictated that school didn't start until right after Labor Day. Which meant that the month of August was entirely devoted to summer vacation unless you were a fall sport athlete who had practices in August. And that was perfectly fine.

Then, round about the time I was in high school in the mid- to late 80s, they pushed the start of school back into August. It was late August, mind you, but still...August. That took some getting used to.

And now it seems every year they just keep messing with us. More for their own amusement than anything else, they keep seeing how far they can move up that first day of school before someone starts to notice. This year, Day #1 is August 15th, which as far as I can tell is the earliest the school year has ever kicked off in Wickliffe.

I will readily note that school has started in early August in Florida and other southern states for years. That's what they're used to, so they don't count in this discussion.

We in the Midwest lived for decades under an academic calendar that didn't commence until the Labor Day picnics were over, and that always seemed like a good way to go at it. At least to me. Labor Day was your last hurrah. As I recall, it was the last weekend during which the city pools were open. Or at least the last weekend they were open under summer hours.

You would watch the Jerry Lewis telethon on Labor Day and then you would go back to school the very next day, or maybe on Wednesday of that week. We were all good with it.

Of course, having said all of this, I realize school districts are subject to forces they can't necessarily control in making this decision, chiefly the state testing schedule that requires you (or at least makes it a very, very good idea) to have a certain number of instructional hours before the dreaded tests begin. The earlier you start, the longer you have to work with the kids before they take the tests, which go a long way toward determining your district's grade on state report cards, teacher and administration performance reviews, funding, etc.

Plus, at the high school level, an earlier start allows a clean break between the first and second semesters. You can finish off first-semester exams before the kids go off for their holiday break, and then start fresh with second-semester classes and material in January.

On the other hand, we somehow for years managed the not-quite-so-clean process of January review and exams at Wickliffe, and I'm guessing we could somehow get through it again if a calendar switch would force us into it.

I always think twice before I criticize school board members and administrators, because I frankly find that most of the people who do that do it out of ignorance. I would like some of them to spend a day in those jobs before they spout off. That's not to say people in those positions are beyond criticism. Not at all. But having the facts in hand first is probably advisable.

In any case, like so many things in life, this whole start-of-school question comes down to this: I wish it wasn't this way, but I get why it is. Things change. Life goes on. You can all get off my lawn anyway.