It seems counterintuitive, but the Cranky Old Guy gets a lot of mail. A fair amount of the correspondence is from people who want the old dude to cheer up and snap out of it and consider the brighter side of life. These are the same people who rescue pets and marry broken people that they think they can fix.
In what probably won’t seem like much of a diversion from what is typically posted in this space, today I am introducing “Cranky Old Guy” as a guest columnist at They’re Just Words. You probably know “Cranky Old Guy” or someone like him, he may be your neighbor or coworker, he could live at your house. He can’t handle things that defy logic and he is ill-equipped to deal with most aspects of the modern world, so he tells kids to get the hell off his lawn and shakes his head a lot asking himself rhetorical questions. He’s not really looking for answers to those questions, he just likes to complain. I’m glad I’m nothing like him, but in many ways, I love this old fuckin’ guy.