4 minute read
Old guys routines
Old Guy Routines
By Jim Drummond
One of the fellows at the old guy waterhole appeared rather befuddled this week. We could all tell that something wasn’t quite right. Someone finally asked him how his day was going. The gent responded, “I’m totally out of whack today. My normal routine is all mixed up. I usually get up at the same time each day and have a cup of coffee. My mid section always begins rumbling when I am exactly halfway through my coffee, so then I take a newspaper to the privy. While I’m on the throne, at exactly the same time each day, I think through the timetable for my daily activities. I have a set time for a workout, a walk, and lunch. I carefully plan my nap, an afternoon snack, and getting the mail out of the box. I have a specific time allowance for the waterhole so that I’m home for the Wheel of Fortune. This morning I was in the reading room and mentally fine tuning my plans when the doorbell rang. I predicted that regardless of who it was, that my normal routine was going to be revised. It’s confounding when my schedule has to be
Jim Drummond is a retired banker and Bozeman native.
modified. My wife answered the door and it was the next door neighbor who asked if we could watch her Great Dane puppy for the day. The dog is three months old and already weighs 184 pounds. My wife enjoys Roscoe, so she agreed. Roscoe bounded through the door and found a table leg to eat, and our neighbor rushed back home before we could have second thoughts. My wife began to coo to the puppy, ‘No, Roscoe, bad dog, don’t eat the coffee table! Go over to the window and swallow some curtains. I want new ones.’ Roscoe gave her a quick glance, then grabbed a couch cushion and energetically began tossing it left and right with a shake of his bear sized muzzle. Couch cushion stuffing began to fly all over the room.” Somebody at the table asked our friend, “What did you do?” The old fellow responded, “I took the newspaper back to the loo. I needed some solitude to rethink my daily routine.” One of the fellows down the table inquired,”How much did you have to revise your agenda?” Our friend responded, “Quite a bit. When I finally came out, couch cushion stuffing was spread throughout the house, one set of curtains was gone, a floor lamp was broken in half, the refrigerator was pushed halfway into the hallway, and water was jetting out from under the sink. I asked my wife what her plans were. With a sweet smile she told me that she was going to take Roscoe for a walk, so I could do anything that I wanted for awhile. I decided to work a trip to the hardware store into my regular routine.” Someone else asked, “Was Roscoe better behaved when your wife brought him home from his walk?” The old chap nodded, “I was working under the sink when they got home. He was much more relaxed. Then my wife declared that Roscoe was probably hungry and I would have to shop for puppy chow. I asked her what to buy. She gave it some thought then finally suggested about fifty pounds of roast beef and a couple of raw chickens. I asked her how long we were going to keep Roscoe. She responded that we would probably have him until evening, but warned that he might start eating the china cabinet or our piano if he became really hungry. I had to add puppy chow shopping to my routine for the day.” One of the older members of the group commented, “You’ve had it rough! How are you going to get back to your standard routine?” Our puppy sitting friend looked around the table, then responded, “I finally concluded that life can be unpredictable, and maybe I should just play along. But if I still feel flustered when I leave the waterhole, I’m going to go home and turn my clock back twenty four hours to start today all over again. That might help me return to my normal routine.” Someone commented,”That will put you a day behind in your calendar.” Our friend responded, “I’ll just skip one day of my regular routine next week, and then I will be all caught up.”
