Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Things will get worse before they get better

By Carl Heintze

My wife says I'm a curmudgeon. Well, that's not exactly what she says. She says I'm an Old Crab. I like to think of myself as a curmudgeon, though. I looked up Old Crab in the dictionary, or tried to, but it wasn't there.

But I did find curmudgeon. A curmudgeon is an irascible, churlish fellow, so Webster's Unabridged says. This left me in a quandary.

I wasn't sure what irascible or churlish meant, either, so I looked them up as well.

If you're irascible, you're easily provoked to anger. If you're churlish, the best the dictionary can say for you is that you're rude. (It says some other things about churlish people, but I'd just as soon not mention them.)

So I guess it is true. Certainly I'm old, and I guess the older I get, the more easily provoked to anger I become. I don't know about being rude, although my wife sometimes says that about me, too. As, for example, "Why did you have to say that?"

I don't know why I said that. It seemed the right thing to say at the time. But I didn't think I was being rude. Honest, perhaps, but not rude.

But then I seem to err in other ways, too.

I mean, sometimes I forget to hold doors open for people of the opposite sex, but I'm not intentionally rude. I'd rather think of myself as forthright. Or even forgetful. When you get older, you're supposed to be entitled to be forgetful.

I do find, too, that as I get older I tend not to suffer fools, bores or those of fixed opinions very well. I think this is because I realize the amount of time left to me is diminishing rapidly, and I haven't got time to waste on such individuals.

I haven't got time to be polite to those who impose upon my limited time, so I suppose that makes me rude or even churlish.

Churlish, though, tends to conjure up a picture of Ebenezer Scrooge or someone of similar ilk. I never thought of myself as Scrooge, or if I did, it was when he was in his good phase after he had seen what he was really doing to Tiny Tim's family.

On the other hand, I've always thought Tiny Tim was a bit much. He always saw the bright side of things. Curmudgeons don't do that. They tend to be pessimists. They think the glass is half empty, that clouds bring rain, not that they have a silver lining, and generally, things will get worse before they get better.

And so I admit to being both a curmudgeon and a pessimist. But not necessarily rude.

As a matter of fact, I know two other curmudgeons who also are pessimists. We are the only members of the South Willow Glen Pessimists Club, a group that got started because two of the three members lived in Willow Glen.

None of us do now. I'm not sure if that is because we are all pessimistic about Willow Glen or for other reasons.

Our club--we like to think of it as a club--has been meeting now for about 25 years. We even have our own logo: a thumb turned downward. (Optimists presumably would turn their thumbs up, but what do they know?) We used to have a flag, too, but in fear of overidentification, we abandoned it a long time ago.

We used to meet for breakfast--a truly good time to be pessimistic, I must add--but as time passed that got to be too early. So in truly pessimistic fashion we decided it would be better to rise late and eat lunch instead.

Then there's the question of membership. In keeping with the finest traditions of our democratic country and upholding diversity as its new goal, we are open to anyone who wants to join.

So far over the years of our existence, though, no one has. That's great because it's so truly pessimistic. No one wants to have anything to do with us.

We have nothing against any of the opposite sex--our wives, after all, belong to that part of society--but none of them have ever tried to attend any of our meetings. If they did, I suppose we would, in the true spirit of pessimism, have to call a formal meeting to decide what to do. But so far it has never happened.

In like fashion, we have no dues, no bylaws, not much of anything. We take turns paying for lunch--the pessimistic way to avoid being indebted to anyone--and to date we have not resorted to having to have dinner. That would be a real admission of age, I guess, unable even to make lunch because it is too early in the day, but it certainly would further the goal of pessimism and curmudgeonry (if there is such a word), so I suppose we ought to consider it.

We've also thought at times about giving honorary awards--you know, the Most Pessimistic Movie of the Year, the Most Pessimistic Politician of 1997, that sort of thing--but because we truly believe no one would really be interested in our choices, we haven't done it.

How long can we go on this way? True pessimism would say not much longer, but we seem to be pretty durable. Who knows, we three curmudgeons might even eventually get a glimmer of the silver lining reputed to be inside every dark cloud.

Aw, but then, it would never happen.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.

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