What Makes an Old Codger?

[BROBS]

I actually got called old for the first time in my life recently. I told a girl at a music festival (who showed up half naked dancing around our campfire and blasting music out of a boom box) that I was 33 years old and she was shocked and called me an old man. When I told her that it was true, and in fact, my (at the time) 3 month old daughter was asleep in the tent right next to us with my wife (it was 3am). She asked if she could hold my daughter.

I said: "Yeah, sure, let me go wake up the sleeping baby and my wife, that is, if they are not already awake from the music, so that a drunk girl I met five seconds ago can dance around the fire in the dark swinging her about like a stuffed animal!"

She said: "So, that's a no then? Well, do you want some acid?"

I said: "No thanks, I'm 33 remember? I'm all bombed out on Czech Pilsner and tobacco-free nicotine pouches."

And then she faded back into the constant ebb of festival humanity, never to be seen again.

A kid called me an old man two winters ago when I went and yelled at him and his friend for blocking the road with huge ice/snow chunks left on the side by the plow. They begrudgingly moved the chunks as I stood there. Then when they left the “tough” one called me an old man. I said that’s right now get the fuck off my street. ? and that I was his real dad.