Even people who aren’t as smart as me know these guys. The old codgers who latch on with raptor like ferocity to young pretty girls everywhere. They are almost universally viewed as “harmless”, as they moon over girls in most cases young enough to be their granddaughters with slobbery compliments and touchy feely grabiness.
Recently, however, my big juicy chess club brain has been recognizing patterned behavior. I postulated my theory to an associate of mine, in that I’m not so sure the intent is absolutely harmless. I began to wonder if the old guys were sending younger men everywhere messaging from the future, like old Biff to young Biff in “Back to the Future” passing on the sports almanac. That message would be hit everything that moves. My theory is that in their primes, these guys, depending on their looks, confidence and verbal dexerity, would be anywhere between a 10:1 shot and 100:1 shot at making a connection. Given their current super oldness, those odds have shifted in the region between 1,000:1, 10,000:1 and beyond. As such, they really need to ramp up those approach numbers to yield a winning outcome. I’m not even sure they ever get a winning outcome, possibly there exist urban legends among senior citizens about a guy who knows a guy who happened to catch a young girl at an extreme moment of emotional fragility or boredom and made it happen. What else could explain this behavior? Not unlike mice chasing cheese in a maze, we tend to execute outcome oriented actions, surely the act of sloppy approach is not in and of itself a desired outcome.
Here are four examples of what I am talking about. Two happened on the same day, and my recent investigation into parapsychology because I’ve already absorbed the entire volume of knowledge of regular psychology, suggests that people underestimate the power of synchronicity of events. So pay attention.
1. Ball comber guy: Ball comber guy is a guy at the rec center pool I go to who combs his ball hair in the locker room. It’s really quite disgusting. I don’t even know why he goes to the pool, other than to comb his balls in a public place, because he never swims. He’s probably in his late thirties, early forties and looks like a Mediterranean Danny Devito, essentially he physically is a boob with hair. His MO is to hammer away relentlessly at the teenage girl lifeguards, regaling them with tales of crazy ex-girlfriends and guys he beat up. He’s really quite revolting. Also, he is clearly violating French math on maximum age difference in a romantic relationship, which is half the mans age plus seven. If you think about it, this French math works at every age.
2. Yappy European guy with chinese friend in sauna: yappy 50 plus European guy yaps away about stupid stories with his chinese friend in the sauna, which really annoys me. A few weeks back he was yapping away about some stupid story on what he was getting his wife for her birthday, and how he was taking her out to dinner and such. Then when he exited he beelined for a really ugly, chubby teenage girl and began yapping away to her about how he sees her in his store all the time and yada yada. Big time French math violator, but at least she was super not pretty. This adds a sense of reality to his efforts, because the other trend I’m noticing is what tremendously huge swings some of these guys are taking in the girls they are going after, as we shall soon see.
3. Weird German Guy who used to be a chef: The first of two synchronized same day events. Having lunch at one of those hotel lounges with the decor from the land that time forgot because they apparently have the best steak sandwich and its cheap. With the same guy I postulated the “old guy long odds theory” to, and a gal that’s pretty good looking, almost as good looking as me (just kidding, she might be as good looking as me…no, scratch that, almost). Weird 70 plus German guy approaches and opens with the weather, transitions into Tiger Woods blah blah blah, blathers on about lost opportunity of not being a golf instructor himself, complete with pantomimed grinding wrap around “teaching them how to hold the club” routine, and leaves. Then he comes back, pulls out a wad of photo’s, and passes my female counterpart a carefully selected photo of what at a cursory glance (because I don’t care) to me looked like some cougar in red blouse with cleavage, or a Russian mail order bride, in a “I hit that” sense. Whatever.
4. Can barely move guy and French Canadian girl: Different rec center because the one I normally go to is closed for annual maintenance, sauna again because they are really good for you, chatting with this French Canadian girl about this and that. She’s actually a bit on the stunning side, with the exception of her tatoo’s which I don’t really care for, and complaining about being too fat (ha, ha, girls are so funny). So exiting the sauna, French Canadian girl goes to the water fountain, out of freaking nowhere, easily 80 years old plus and barely mobile, old guy approaches. “You have a great body” he says. So disgusting! How overtly sexual and inappropriate to a person in a swimming suit that you don’t even know, but it’s okay because you are super old and allegedly harmless? So gross.
Overall my concern is this: it was always advertised to me that as you got older, your sex drive waned and stuff. Not sure about that. The proliferation of viagra suggests to me that it might never go away, possibly the ability, but not the drive. If you offered me a pill that would give me the physical desire to play video games or get stupid drunk, stuff I outgrew, I wouldn’t be interested. Since most guys are essentially the same animal regardless of how we try to position ourselves, are these behaviors consistent with an unhappy fate many of us will share, or are these guys just outliers on the creepy scale?
I’m going with outliers. Lots and lots and lots of outliers out there…
