For the most part, I really don’t fucking care about how most of my brothers and sisters spend their day, their peccadilloes aired for all the world to see on their blogs. Even my fellow academics seem to think that their mean little lives are somehow interesting, as if the world revolved around petty concerns. I include myself, of course.
“Couldn’t write my dissertation today.” Cue the violin. “Student was mean to me.” Waa Waa Waa. “My dean says I have to teach freshmen.” Welcome to the real world. The fascist anti-semite Ezra Pound said that he didn’t give a damn if the entire world wrote poetry, as long as they as they kept it to themselves. I sometimes feel the same way.
Which is why I am must apologize for today’s post, for it is a kind of violation of your need to be entertained, of your inherent right, reader, not to be bothered. But I must have out:
At my local coffeehouse–really, one of those nasty chains that we all love to hate but secretly patronize (they have free wi-fi, after all)–I have recently become the victim of a group of 7 - 10 retirees, men who take up the space and fill it with their boisterous badinage. They yell across the room at each other the most insipid conversation. The best way to get from here to there. Whether the market is going to fall further. Sports scores. How much horsepower in that engine. One of them had clearly been the quintessential geek in high school. He wears a USA t-shirt and a USA baseball cap, in case he forgets where he is, I guess, and someone can lead him back to his country. They are almost all large, grain fed. They ogle the young women–which is my job–and then look at each other, knowingly. I am terribly put out.
One old-timer isn’t part of the group, but he clearly wishes to be. As if he were back in high school. He hovers about their perimeter, aching to take part. But they barely look his way. He’ll sit at a neighboring table and look over at them, longingly. I’ve never seen them once invite him into the circle.
They have made of my coffee shop their living room, when in fact I thought it was my living room. I try to write a sentence and hear their cackling. I do not begrudge their getting old. We’ll all be there soon enough. Nor their camaraderie. I simply wish that they move on, perhaps find a venue that does not have free wi-fi, for the freeloader in me must need stay put.
And as if they weren’t bad enough, I’ve decided the book I’m working on sucks ass. But that’s fodder for another post.
PS. To the cretin who dumped his chewing gum in the parking lot of my local grocery: I hope you get syphilis.
Study the grumpy maddening old gits! Write a grant research proposal to do some non-participant ethnographic research on ‘em. That’ll teach ‘em. And you’ll spend a lot of time with your junior researchers drinking coffee.
Title “Coffee House Culture: a study of an aging in-group
I’m serious.
I like you! I share your irritations–more than you know! Please add me to your blog list.
I think Dr. Dillusioned’s idea is fantastic, but I’d tweak the title: “Star Bucks: Coffee House Culture and the Reaffirmation of Boomer Masculinity”
Fergusson. We are onto a winner here. If Grumpy could get the management to agree to set up a webcam in the coffee shop we could do remote non-participant observation.
[...] 6, 2008 by thegrumpyacademic I wrote previously about the old farts at my local–which is to say, global–coffeehouse. I made it back [...]