I have officially become a fogey. How and when I slipped down that slope is a conundrum to me, but all the young reporters working for me have confirmed my fogeyness.
I have hired young, talented and very smart reporters at the Courier-Herald and Covington Reporter. What was I thinking? I’m dumb and I hire brainy (palm hits my forehead).
My drooling slide into ol’ fogeydom was gleefully pointed out to me last week when I told Mr. Ray Still (the new reporter in Bonney Lake) and Sarah Wehmann I planned to shoot a haying season shot for the front.
I immediately began to think back to happy hay days on my family farm. Haying season was the hot time in the old town when I was young. I thought they would all be waiting on the edges of their chairs to hear my haying season tales of adventure.
What follows is an accurate rendition of the dialogue between Sarah and I (with Ray secretly rooting her on) that has been carefully crosschecked with my imaginary friend (who always agrees with me).
Sarah: “Is that a word?”
Me: “Is what a word?”
Sarah: “Hay? ing?”
Me: “Haying?
Sarah: “Did you make that up?”
Me: “No, I didn’t make it up. (My most haughty voice) Do you know when I was a kid we never went to school in June because that was the beginning of haying season?”
Sarah: “What is it?”
Smash my forehead on my desk? twice.
Me: “You know hay? Haying? In bales? Throw them around? Get all sticky and itchy? Look cool like that black-and-white movie where pretty girls sing songs and dance around with bouncy dresses and always want to kiss the guy who throws bales around and is sticky and itchy?”
I got blank stares and sympathetic nods followed by knowing sidelong glances as if I don’t notice because I am petting my pink squirrel that talks and always agrees with me.
Sarah smiled that smile and asked, “Did you take your medicine this week?”
In desperation I call my crack reporter in Covington. Surely she will know about haying season.
“What did you say?”
“Haying season. Haying season? You know hay, season, bales? Haying season.”
Long silence.
“I had a friend who grew up on a cow farm. Does that help?”
A cow farm? A stupid cow farm. I checked to see if I was drooling on my shirt, or if there was an incision on my head from a lobotomy I had forgotten about.
A cow farm? Seriously.
I politely told her the term is dairy farm, or beef farm? Not cow farm. Cow farm makes me want to throw up, but if I do I give them evidence to put me away in a very quiet place.
OK, I admit it. The wunderkinds are a wonder and I am a card-carrying ol’ fogey.
The wunderkinds can text using their fancy opposable thumbs. I text with one shaky finger and it takes me five minutes to spell the word “the” correctly.
They can post pictures with their phone in two seconds flat. My phone calls all sorts of people for no reason. It is the spawn of Satan.
The young women wunderkinds also consistently side with my daughter when she won’t let me choose her boyfriends, even though I am clearly the father who knows best (sounds like another cool TV show they never heard of…).
Fine. I am apparently a member of the lost cow farm generation. Since I have suddenly slipped down the slobbery slope of fogeydom, I will now embrace it.
That’s Mr. Ol’ Fogey to you.
