Old Farts, Young Assholes

When I was a pimply faced teenager there were certain things that old guys did. They would yell at kids for cutting across their beloved lawns, and fire off grumpy letters to the editor that railed against all the things I liked. A favorite pastime of the old men in our neighborhood was yelling at the teenagers whose driving habits they didn't approve of. At that age I didn't see any problem with squealing out from a stop sign and smoking your tires, in fact the larger the plume of smoke emanating from the rear wheel wells, the better. On one occasion one of our neighbors, an obese man probably no older than forty, yet in my eyes ancient, came waddling out of his house to bellow at a car load of kids speeding down our street. Smart ass little Alan thought he would educate this stupid old fart, "The legal limit on an unmarked road is 30mph!" I informed him. "You had better study your rules of the road, you little asshole. It's twenty on all residential streets.", he yelled, and then turned and waddled back up to his house. Was I upset that he had corrected me, and been right? Hell no, what I had a problem with was that he called me an asshole. Now my dad had called me that and worse all the time, but I had never experienced somebody who didn't know me that well calling me an asshole. In my mind I was truly one of the fairest and most decent people on earth.

So the other day, my friend Russell and I took a walk around the block with Chandler. As a car came speeding down the street, I casually pointed to the car and remarked to Russell, "Look at how fast that car is going." To my surprise, the asshole turned around and pulled up next to me. "Did you think I was going too fast?", he asked. "As a matter of fact, yes I did.", I replied. "Well I was going thirty, and I've lived on this street long enough to know it's okay to go thirty." "The speed limit is twenty five.", I informed him. Suddenly I was sucked right back to 1966. I was reliving the asshole incident, except this time I was the old fart. Funny thing, it turns out that my overweight neighbor back then was right, I was a little asshole. As my penance for my past assholiness I went home and fired off letters to every member of the city council, and the mayor, demanding speed bumps on our streets. That'll teach those little whippersnappers.