Perhaps the word became a word due to a misunderstanding. Maybe
an old drunk originated it. Let’s suppose he was unhappy with the food and was
trying to say that there was too much curry in the mutton. As he stumbles from
the tavern, he is saying, “curry” and “mutton” under his breath in an angry
fashion. Children playing near the door of the tavern chant the sound he made
to mock him as he staggered down the street, “CURRY MUTTON! CURRY MUTTON!” The
waitress heard this (after discovering he had left no tip), over the din in the
tavern, misunderstood, and “curmudgeon” became a miserly old man. It’s a
stretch, I know. But if you read up on the origin of words, some explanations
sound a LOT more ridiculous than this.
I have chosen curmudgeon to define myself. I like the sound and
cadence of this word with three syllables and an almost equal amount of
consonants and vowels. This is a word that sounds as if it’s something that
rises up from a bog shaking its fist in the air. It is a word that sounds
normal and right when it’s mumbled. The very sound of it implies what I believe
it to mean, or more accurately, what it has COME to mean over the last several
hundred years, a not-very-nice-old-fart.
Curmudgeonly, as an adjective, defines the subject as crusty
and ill tempered. I can claim these. It was these that I became in my early
forties. I have been honing and perfecting crusty and ill tempered for the last
10 years. I must thank society for its input in this evolution. I have also
come to believe, after observing the behavior of others whom I would define in
this way, that a curmudgeon hates just about everything, whether it makes sense
or not.
I pretty much have a dislike of everything. I do not feel the
need to politely hide this fact. Why, just last week the man who delivers mail
to my office once again wished me a “good morning” as he set the tower of UPS
parcels on my desk. I have explained to him on numerous occasions, that while I
will acknowledge that it is morning, I cannot go further and describe it
as “good” because it’s just too early to tell. But this particular morning he
went on to say, “How about those Yankees winning the game last night?” Before I
could stop myself, the words came blasting out of my mouth like bullets.
“I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS ABOUT PROFESSIONAL SPORTS.”
“But it’s the Yankees” he pleaded.
“AGAIN, I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS ABOUT PROFESSIONAL SPORTS.”
As he turned to retreat to the safety of the mailroom I
shouted, “IF YOU WANT TO COME AND TALK TO ME ABOUT ART I MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING
TO SAY!”
The woman in the cubicle on the other side of the partition
rose up like a prairie dog so that only her head was visible, and she said, “THAT
is why you’re such a “dude magnet.” And then she disappeared back to her burrow
of hell, the burrow she must reside in eight hours a day, five days a week, in
order to feed and clothe her children.
The next morning the other mail guy came to our office. I was
feeling a little conciliatory, so I said to him, “I hope I didn’t alarm your
little friend yesterday morning about the sports thing.”
“You mean David?” he asked.
I said, “Yes, I didn’t mean to be mean. I mean, I AM mean, but
I didn’t mean to be at that particular time.”
Again the gopher of understatement rose from her burrow to say,
“You called that David guy his “little friend.”
She was right. I had.
“Why did I say that?” I asked her.
“Because dear, in your mind, all men are this big.” She made a
gesture with her thumb and forefinger as if to show me how much salt to add to
a recipe. This was insight that years of therapy hadn’t provided. Then she
disappeared.
If I had to make two lists, one for things I like, things that
make me happy, and a list for things that I don’t like, the latter would
require reams (another good word) of paper, which if laid end to end would
circle the world twice. The first list could be accomplished on a damp cocktail
napkin with a pen low on ink.
There are those who would assert that people come to be
curmudgeons because of bitterness and lack of “a life” so they feel compelled
to resent all of those who do things they only dreamed of doing or were unable
to do. They might believe that curmudgeons are those who were not popular or
loved, or those who lived in the strictest of circumstances and so were not
allowed to participate socially. Fundamentalists, neurotics, agoraphobics,
workaholics or psychotics were likely candidates for curmudgeon hood.
This may be true to some degree. But I am here to tell you that
my curmudgeonliness is borne of experience… all kinds of experience, and a
proximity to a vast assortment of people and lifestyles. I grew up around
Republicans and Democrats, socialists and fascists, Catholics, Presbyterians,
Jews and “born agains.” I have lived among sexists, feminists, slow drivers,
fast drivers,
generous people, stingy people, “attractive”
and “ugly” people, those that are well-read and those who hate the written
word, and every kind of person in-between. I am an open-minded, narrow-minded
bitch… a complex contradiction.
I long for the day when I can purchase an abandoned lighthouse
in a place that is cold and rainy most of the time. Cold is good. Sunny and hot
is a constant irritation. I want to live where everyone wears lots of clothes
all year long; clothes to cover them from toe to chin and beyond. Thermals are
the sexy lingerie of this region. Red and white, checked flannel shirts are the
“little black dress” in this world. No Speedos or bikinis here. No sir!
I will be the mean, old lady who lives at the end of a rocky
jetty in an abandoned lighthouse 
that juts like a middle finger toward the
ocean. It will be full of comforters and brass lanterns, books and boxes of
macaroni. I will have cats and perhaps a dog, although dogs need to go out
every day and I may not wish to do this as it may place me in the proximity of
another human being and I would be forced to throw jagged rocks in their
general direction which might endanger the dog, so maybe I’ll just have cats,
and perhaps a lizard.
There will be no TV. There will be no daily paper. There will
be no cell phones. Maybe a “life-alert,” but no cell phones. I will only have
to travel into town once a month for supplies. These visits will cause people
to lock their doors and silence their children. The wind will blow cold
wherever I pass. Republicans will shudder in fear. People in SUVs will dare not
travel down Main Street on this day. Those who would chance to drive by would
know to proceed slowly lest I pummel their cars with my gloved, arthritic hands.
There would be no loud music emanating forth from any vehicle because I would
abide no one that would aggressively impose their taste in music on others. This
would incur the same wrath as those that would drive fast silently.
I would shop for my groceries in a little store owned by real
people, not a corporate behemoth superstore that has designated itself a non-person
so that it cannot be held accountable for anything. The people who own this
little store would cater to their customers. They would not expect me to scan
my own groceries. The person at the register would not talk to the checkout boy
about the date they had last night and the history test on Friday. They would
make eye contact with me. They would actually care whether I was able to find
everything I was looking for, and if not, they would order it. They would be
careful not to scan something twice. They would not call me MA’AM. They would
not look through me or past me to the hottie in the next aisle. They would card
me in a respectful manner for my cheap bottle of cabernet knowing full well
that I was well past legal age.
I would put my groceries in a drag-along and make my way back
to my jetty. The fact that I chose to no longer live among shallow, stupid,
culture-starved people would not matter, because my lighthouse would welcome me.
Football would not exist in my world. War would not be in my world. Greed would
not be in my world. Magazines with headings like “How To Be More Sexy” and “How
to Please Your Mate” or “How to Lose 10 Pounds in a Week” would not be a part
of my world. I have been in that world. I have fully participated in that world.
That world sucks.
I am a curmudgeon who has experienced the very things for which
I have disdain. I have been selfish and have been wasteful. I have been
superficial. I have used my daughter’s cell phone. I have ridden in fast cars. I
have taken everything the earth has offered me for granted. I have shampooed,
rinsed and repeated. I have even gone to a professional ball game. I have
looked through someone as they spoke to me. I have acquiesced to a minority
dictating to a majority on just about everything because they have money, power
and a certain body part.
But now, because of the things I KNOW, not the things I do NOT
know, I have chosen to be a crusty, ill-tempered old woman. Enough is enough. I
long for my lighthouse and a time when the world evolves beyond the absurd
priorities that now dictate its course. If culture, kindness, and intellect
emerge victorious, then perhaps I will stick around and be nice. But for now,
curmudgeon suits me.
Debbie Cashon Klein is a Safety Harbor resident.
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