Well, it’s happening: I’m becoming a crank. My best friend told me so after reading my latest diatribe about lazy-whiny-grade-grubbing students. Before that I had ranted about drunken-noisy-destructive students.
And I’m not just being a crank in print. Twice in the past couple of weeks I’ve called the borough cops to complain about loud music pouring out of one of the frat houses down the block at my bedtime. If this keeps up I’ll be pulling my pants up to my armpits and sitting in a lawn chair on the corner, writing down the license plates of every car that doesn’t come to a full stop.
“These kids today!” I’ll mutter as I go inside to trim my nose hairs.
“Who’s the old guy?” the fraternity pledges will ask.
“Frank the Crank?” the upperclassmen will answer. “Ignore him. He’s always complaining about something.”
The hell of it is, I hate complainers — almost as much as I hate televisions in restaurants, compulsive tapping and talking on cell phones, commercials after kickoffs, apostrophe misuse, the influence of lobbyists in Congress…
And I’m such a mild-mannered chap. Maybe it’s my sciatica. (“Wasn’t that a prison uprising?” asks a witty friend. “It was,” says I, “and it’s flared up again in my left leg.) Or perhaps it’s the onset of dark season, which always bums me out. Or President Obama’s failure to usher in an area of peace and prosperity after 10 whole months in office.
I’d rather be called a curmudgeon than a crank. I prefer curmudgeon’s medieval resonance: In high dudgeon the curmudgeon was sent straight to the dungeon for bludgeoning a sturgeon with a cudgel. (Has anyone ever been in low dudgeon?)
I like that there’s an International Society of Curmudgeons. (One defining aspect of curmudgeonry, according to its Web site, “is the sure and absolute knowledge that the cause of all of life’s problems is young people.”)
The truth is, even before my hair started going gray and falling out I was a curmudgeon in training. For example, I’ve always hated loud music in bars.
Jon Winokur, editor of “The Portable Curmudgeon,” has written this defense of the curmudgeons among us:
“They’re neither warped nor evil at heart. They don’t hate mankind, just mankind’s absurdities. They’re just as sensitive and soft-hearted as the next guy, but they hide their vulnerability beneath a crust of misanthropy. They ease the pain by turning hurt into humor. They attack maudlinism because it devalues genuine sentiment. Nature, having failed to equip them with a serviceable denial mechanism, has endowed them with astute perception and sly wit.
“Curmudgeons are mockers and debunkers whose bitterness is a symptom rather than a disease. They can’t compromise their standards and can’t manage the suspension of disbelief necessary for feigned cheerfulness. Their awareness is a curse.
“Perhaps curmudgeons have gotten a bad rap in the same way that the messenger is blamed for the message: They have the temerity to comment on the human condition without apology. They not only refuse to applaud mediocrity, they howl it down with morose glee. Their versions of the truth unsettle us, and we hold it against them, even though they soften it with humor.”
In other words, the curmudgeon is an idealist at heart. He is forever disappointed that the world is not better than it is. Psychoanalyze him and you would probably discover that first and foremost, he is disappointed in himself: What is he doing to fix the broken world?
It’s a weird kind of egomania, I’ll admit: The curmudgeon believes he could fix the world if he were only more energetic or courageous or charismatic or something. Lacking those qualities, he stands on the corner and harangues. (Another good word cluster: The orangutan harangued his keeper until he got him to share his lemon meringue pie.)
As I’m writing this, as it happens, Webster’s is playing a song called “Moanin’” (tune by Bobby Timmons, lyrics by Jon Hendricks and memorably sung by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross):
Every morning finds me moanin’
‘cause of all the sorrow I see.
Life’s a losin’ gamble to me.
Cares and woes have got me moanin’.
It’s cheering me up, oddly. I’m reminded that the discontents of a college professor living in a place like State College are pretty penny-ante when all’s said and done: stacks of shoddy papers to grade, dreary winters, drunks despoiling the neighborhood. The curmudgeon must remember that he has a job, that it is, in fact, a pretty good job, that he is sheltered and fed and reasonably healthy (prison uprisings in his left leg notwithstanding), that he is not fighting in some stupid war, that he loves and is loved.
I suppose this is a Thanksgiving column. At this time of year at least, even Frank the Crank gives thanks.
In high dudgeon? Write to Russell Frank at rfrank@psu.edu.
