# Old coot rants you don't get **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 26, 2005, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063 "2005-02-26T23:08:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pokey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pokey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pokey)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/21 "2005-02-27T04:15:57Z")
Oh my mom always says black and white movie were better because they had to try harder to make it look good. Now that I’m older and I’ve seen more of those crazy cinemapinkmavsion or techiorangascope or whatever movies I can see why she might have found colour jarring at first but holy crow, mom, give me a break, it’s 2005 and they’ve toned it down. My dad is the worst. I think his mom was some kind of nutjob or something because my dad always comes up with things like that it’s better to scrub the floor on your hands and knees than to use a mop, or it’s better to do the dishes by hand. You name it, and he will say it’s better to do it the hard way. The reason it pisses me off is that if he cleaned the floor more than once a year I’m sure he’d get tired of it and use a mop like everyone else. Ditto for doing the damn dishes. I bet his mom would have gotten on her knees and kissed the dishwasher or the swiffer wet-jet. But he always pretends that everything was better back when a woman spent all her waking hours trying to clean the house with only vinegar and an old rag. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/22 "2005-02-27T04:32:21Z")
> [@Starving Artist](#): > > The thing is, [lynching, wifebeating, gaybashing, etc.] weren’t nearly as frequent as many have been led to believe, so most people from that era had no experience with them. What they did experience was societal interaction in the main, and that is what is much worse now. There’s some point to that. It should also be observed that every so often, you still encounter a Ranting Old Coot who lets it slip (usually after a few pops) that at least, back in the day, the nonwhite, nonmale, and nonstraight “knew their place.” What went on back then couldn’t have gone on without a lot of tacit approval. > [@](#): > > here is no question that life for both blacks and women is better now, but those of us who lived under the more well behaved and civilized society that existed then feel like the baby was thrown out with the bath water in making these changes. We feel equality for blacks and women could have been acheived without the wholesale abandonment of many of the qualities that made life better then in so many other ways. > > Or so it seems to this old geez. 😉 Your kind is fast dying out, I fear… ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/23 "2005-02-27T05:03:43Z")
> [@Beware of Doug](#): > > There’s some point to that. It should also be observed that every so often, you still encounter a Ranting Old Coot who lets it slip (usually after a few pops) that at least, back in the day, the nonwhite, nonmale, and nonstraight “knew their place.” What went on back then couldn’t have gone on without a lot of tacit approval. Not tacit approval so much as a barely conscious acknowledgement that such things happened on occasion. Most people didn’t relate to it…much like most people don’t relate to it when disaster or crime strikes “someone else.” It seemed at the time like things like that happened to “other people,” and it wasn’t until they had first-hand experience with it that most people gave it much thought. What I’d like to know is how this notion took hold that the destruction of the civilized and polite norms of that day came to be equated with the injustices we’re talking about, and why their destruction seems to be regarded as having been necessary in order to acheive equality. The one really has nothing to do with the other. > [@Beware of Doug](#): > > Your kind is fast dying out, I fear… Not all that fast, pal! I figure I’ve got around twenty-five to thirty years to go yet. And by that time, you’ll be approaching geezerhood, and then the next generation, and so on. A thousand years from now we’ll all be momentary blips in history. Cheers! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/24 "2005-02-27T05:10:24Z")
> [@Starving Artist](#): > > What I’d like to know is how this notion took hold that the destruction of the civilized and polite norms of that day came to be equated with the injustices we’re talking about, and why their destruction seems to be regarded as having been necessary in order to acheive equality. The one really has nothing to do with the other. I wish I knew why some folks think that the obtaining of civil rights must come at the cost of common civility, but some folks definitely do think this. In 1972, I remember getting a very bad feeling about the growing feminist movement (of which I was a part) when I saw a man open a door for a woman, as a courtesy, and the woman glared at him and said “Pig.” ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/25 "2005-02-27T05:45:22Z")
> [@pinkfreud](#): > > In 1972, I remember getting a very bad feeling about the growing feminist movement (of which I was a part) when I saw a man open a door for a woman, as a courtesy, and the woman glared at him and said “Pig.” ☹ Indeed. This is exactly this sort of thing that I’m talking about. It seeems to me that equality and harmonious relations between the sexes and between differing races would occur in a much more positive way if people weren’t so eager to use their perceived moral superiority as an excuse to be rude or contemptuous toward people who for all they know are already on their side. And by the way, how are things in Tulsa? I lived there for six years in the seventies. Very nice town. Lots of picturesque neighborhoods. I used to love driving down Riverside drive and watching all the activity. I liked Tulsa quite a bit. Regards. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/26 "2005-02-27T05:59:30Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > The one that gets me is that old people often proclaim that “kids just aren’t as smart as the used to be”. They usually claim that it is because standards in the schools have gone down over the years and kids don’t work as hard. Surprise, Surprise, huge amounts of research shows that [every measure of intelligence](http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/FLYNNEFF.html) has increased a significant amount over the years with the current generation the brightest of all. If you transported an old coot with average intelligence for his day to a school of today as a youth, he may find that his bus was shorter than the one he remembered. I agree. I don’t think the “new math” of 25 or 30 years ago worked out too well, but I was amused to hear people of my age rant and rave that the “kids won’t know how to do mathematics.” They seem to have forgotten that back in our day, math was the great bugbear of elementary school. We started arithmetic in the **fourth grade** and during the years before that we always faced with “Just you wait until you have to take arithmetic!” And I know few whizzes at mathematics who came out of our school, just like now. And I’m here to tell you that people didn’t know how to make change properly in the 1930’s either. And for the most part they couldn’t handle common fractions very well either. The only weaknesses I find in schools today is what seems like an over deemphasis of history and geography. I’ve visited our local high school and I am quite impressed with the advanced level of the work done there. My only complaint about today is the population explosion of people talking on the cell phone in the checkout line at the supermarket. And most of them aren’t young by any means. In a restaurant I saw a guy come in with two others. After they sat down he pulled out a cell phone, made a call and spent most of the rest of the time talking on it. Talk about rude! I think I would have told him he obviously found other company more desirable and moved myself to another table. ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/27 "2005-02-27T06:17:13Z")
Being 61, I am a really old coot. The one thing that bothers me the most and the young the least is the lack of personal responsibility that today’s young seem to have. Everything that is wrong in their lives is somebody else’s fault. I lived in Tulsa for over 50 years, From late 1943 to 1998. Is a really good town. A little too big for me now but since I don’t live there, it is okay. Riverside Drive is still a cool stretch to profile on. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/28 "2005-02-27T06:23:38Z")
Thanks, **Gus**. I still get there from time to time but usually only for a few hours. Still, it’s been enough time for me to see how much it’s changed since 1980 when I last lived there. It has indeed _grown_! Regards. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/29 "2005-02-27T06:37:45Z")
What galls me though is this notion that we’re much looser with sex than we were in the past. Anyone who has studied history can tell you this isn’t exactly true. As far as calculators go-they were pretty much essential once you get into pre-algebra and such. Math is still hard, calculators or not. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/30 "2005-02-27T06:43:54Z")
> [@pinkfreud](#): > > Here’s my favorite cootism, heard hundreds of times from friends and colleagues who are fiftysomething and above: > > “Kids today don’t know any math because they do all their homework using calculators and computers.” > > (This one may be true of some kids. I have noticed that young cashiers often have a terrible time doing any mental math.) When I was in school, (and that wasn’t too long ago) we were tacitly _discouraged_ from doing any mental math. Our teachers insisted we “show the work” whenever we did a math problem, so instead of mentally doing some of the parts and then just jotting down the result, you had to show each and every step on paper. Like any ability–you don’t use it, you lose it. To this day, even when doing a simple math problem, I reach for a pen and paper-- I just seem to have trouble visualizing numbers in my head. (I can see words, and how to spell them, but for some reason, can’t “see” sequences of numbers.) ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/31 "2005-02-27T06:59:23Z")
> [@Mississippienne](#): > > I’m another one who can’t read analog clocks. Well, okay, I can read them but only if I stare at it for several minutes and count all the little lines. Even then I mess up the hour often as not. I’m 20, btw. I’m 34, and love analog clocks. That said, I had a hard time learning them at school (aged 7 or so) simply because the teacher would always do the “The small hand is on such-and-such, and the big hand is on the twelve” bit. What if the big hand was on one of those grown-up non-twelve bits beeeotch? Grr… **ahem** Once I “got it” though, I fell in love with analog. You don’t actually read the time like with a digital, but you just kinda deal in angles: oh it’s ‘yay much’ until I can go home" kinda thing. I think analog is superior and will be around forever - remember digital speedometers on 1984 model cars? Yair, there’s a reason they didn’t last - they sucked. Anyway, one of the Sydney newspaper ran a series of articles on this topic. It was probably close to ten years ago, and even then there were seventeen year-olds who not only were incapable of things like reading a clock or driving a stick, but they couldn’t play a vinyl record! ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/32 "2005-02-27T07:05:42Z")
The other thing I forgot to mention from those newspaper reports were stories of teenagers having to use a rotary dial telephone, and _pressing the holes_. ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/33 "2005-02-27T09:49:04Z")
> [@Anastasaeon](#): > > Back in my day we used the obelisks to tell time. You had \*time[/time]? Back in my day, we had no time… everything all happened at once! I’m here to tell you, it was **hard** trying to brush your teeth while simultaneously trudging uphill 10 miles to school (both ways) while simultaneously dying of heart failure while simultaneously getting married while simu… you get the picture. We had it tough! Not like you kids today with your sequential, cause and effect lifestyles. ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/34 "2005-02-27T09:51:00Z")
And we had no coding, either! And we liked it! ---
**Author:** ![butter\_pie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aca169/32.png) [@butter\_pie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butter_pie)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/35 "2005-02-27T10:16:30Z")
I don’t think the math thing is a good example. Math just seems to not be something that comes as naturally as language and it is one of those things if you don’t do it all the time, you kind of loose the ability. I was decent at pretty much everything but geometry in school, but I don’t remember most of what I learned. I just don’t have much use for the quadratic equation in day to day life. Similarly, when I used to have a job where I rang cash registers and made change all day, I got REALLY good at mental math. Now? I have to write it down and think about it. Reading comprehension and depth of information taught is probably a better scale of the quality of education. And I’m 25 and remember spending time in the first grade specifically doing nothing but learning time on an analog clock and to count money. I struggle with time on digital clocks, actually, since when I tell time on an analog clock I don’t even translate it in my head to numbers. I just see the clock as a pie chart and the points on the clock relative to times of the day or lengths of time (i.e. I’ve got 1/4 clock face until I need to leave). I’ve had friends that did the count-the-little-lines thing. Everyone thinks differently. 🙂 My favourite old coot rant is the one about employment not being the way it used to. You got a job, you stayed there for life, you’d be paid a decent wage and then you’d get a little plaque or a gold watch, and a pension when you retired. And I have a hard time faulting them for being nostalgic about that. ---
**Author:** ![Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4da419/32.png) [@Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gala_Matrix_Fire)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/36 "2005-02-27T15:17:00Z")
The mother of a friend of mine once decried the use of comforters on beds, because it was so easy to make a bed with a comforter. For some reason she thought there was some sort of virtue in the pain in the ass of making a bed with a flimsy bedspread. I get a big kick out of movies where there’s a ballpark full of spectators wearing suits and ties and hats. I’m really torn between wishing everyone looked as nicely dressed as they did several decades ago and wishing everyone could wear clothes that felt like pajamas all the time. I’m sure that if our designers and manufacturers wanted to, they could make clothes that both looked neat and felt comfortable and were affordable. For some reason, they aren’t doing that. As for my own cootish pet peeve, I am scandalized that so many children aren’t learning cursive. I don’t want to derail this thread though, and this topic has been dealt with many times before. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/37 "2005-02-27T15:59:48Z")
“Back in _my_ day we didn’t _have_ gravity…we didn’t \*have \* an atmosphere…” ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/38 "2005-02-27T16:23:18Z")
Ha! I’m afraid I would trade some measure of civility, etc., for being able to stand up in the light and amongst white people like an equal. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be constantly told to hang out with my own people, to stay away from whites, etc. > [@GusNSpot](#): > > Being 61, I am a really old coot. The one thing that bothers me the most and the young the least is the lack of personal responsibility that today’s young seem to have. Everything that is wrong in their lives is somebody else’s fault. However, I do agree with the lack of personal responsibility thing, and I’m half your age, Granddad, so I think I still constitute amongst the young. My parents taught me to own up to my mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/39 "2005-02-27T16:29:32Z")
> [@pinkfreud](#): > > I wish I knew why some folks think that the obtaining of civil rights must come at the cost of common civility, but some folks definitely do think this. In 1972, I remember getting a very bad feeling about the growing feminist movement (of which I was a part) when I saw a man open a door for a woman, as a courtesy, and the woman glared at him and said “Pig.” ☹ Anger, I guess the thinking goes, is to be validated as a legitimate response to repression. No, not everyone in 1972 was a Yippie or a Weatherman or a Black Panther, but anger was in the air, along with a lot of untried pop psychology that encouraged people to let it all hang out. Besides, post-WW2 repression had gotten quite out of hand by the mid-60s, especially if you weren’t old enough to remember how things had been pre-WW2. And that was the other thing that was in the air: youth. The young were going to run everything. History shmistory. Baby! Bathwater! Out! The system is sick, and everything but us is part of the system, so it’s ALL gotta go. ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2005, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063/40 "2005-02-27T18:29:16Z")
> [@Beware of Doug](#): > > Besides, post-WW2 repression had gotten quite out of hand by the mid-60s, especially if you weren’t old enough to remember how things had been pre-WW2. And that was the other thing that was in the air: youth. The young were going to run everything. History shmistory. Baby! Bathwater! Out! The system is sick, and everything but us is part of the system, so it’s ALL gotta go. You know what I find funny…the people who felt this way were the ones raised in the “wholesome” '50 and '40’s households that social conservatives want us to go back to. Goodness, if that’s what happened the first time… 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-coot-rants-you-dont-get/292063.md?page=3)