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Tax Attacks

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Clearly the summer is off to a slow start for perennial Sophomore Bubby Spamden, a boy with too much time on his hands.

Hey Mr. C.,

I’ve got a question for you.

What is it with you old people anyway? You’re supposed to be easy to figure out, but me and my friends have been kinda stumped. We’re not been getting the attention we expect … and DESERVE … from the geezer contingent in our town. Part of being young in summertime is to go out at night and have lots of loud fun in public places – fun that makes wrinkly folks mad.

We’ve been trying and trying, hanging out on streets downtown and in parks and even at the mall, laughing and messing with each other and acting goofy, but nobody even looked at us! So we upped the ante and started cursing loudly, because that’s always been a good way to get a rise out of cranky oldsters. We waited until a little clump of creaky blue hairs walked by and then my buddy Doug let rip with some #$%’s, and a few *&#!’s, and even a *#&*@!#-#%*$. I was expecting a lot of finger wagging and lecturing, but nobody said anything. At first I thought their hearing aids were turned off, but I finally decided they just didn’t care! What’s wrong with our society that it’s so hard to shock people?

Finally I asked my dad and he said “there’s been a cultural shift in language that started with Lenny Bruce and now has reached its full fruition with the Internet and the current level of discourse.” (He talks like that all the time – it’s boring).

His argument – there are no more dirty four letter words left in the language that have the power to shock large numbers of people – except one.

And he says that word is “Taxes”.

He said if we go around shouting about raising taxes and drop the word into every sentence we can at every chance we get, it would sound taxing brilliant and every old person within earshot will go out of their taxing minds telling us to shut up and then we can tell them it’s too taxing bad and they can just tax off because this is the way we taxing talk, and then we can feel like real honest-to-tax teenagers again.

I’m thinking it might work. Or he might be messing with us. Which is it?

Your friend,

Bubby

It shouldn’t be so hard for a young person to draw a little scorn from older people in the summertime, but I tend to think Bubby’s dad is taking him for a ride on this one. Old folks are just tired, and in a world that demands so much disapproval, one has to be careful where one chooses to spend it. Even so, I’d watch my mouth in public. You don’t want to get caught tossing the “T” word around.

What did you do to make the old folks angry?

72 thoughts on “Tax Attacks”

  1. I was such a sweet, earnest teenager that I didn’t ever bug adults. With one exception. My tastes in music freaked out my folks and got me in trouble.

    My mother was what she called a “worry wart.” One day she my sister and me in for a lecture, telling us that we were headed for miserable lives because we were failing to participate in the musical culture of our age. If we didn’t get with it, musically, we’d never be popular. She gave us each a buck and sent us off to the music store with instructions to buy a 45 rpm record apiece.

    I came back with the classic Sun recording in which a young Elvis Presley became one of the first white singers to perform a “race” song: “Baby, Let’s Play House.”
    “Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby baby.
    Baby, baby baby, b-b-b-b-b-b baby baby, baby (laughs).
    Baby baby baby
    Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you.”

    My mother was shocked almost speechless, and I went from the “not participating in youth culture” doghouse to the “listening to horny junk music” doghouse. Later that day my father told me Elvis was popular because “he hops around like he has a wild hair up his ***.”

    That was the precise moment my teenage years began. 🙂

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  2. I’ve always liked old people and found them interesting, so annoying them was never a personal aspiration.

    Now, middle-aged people (aka parents’ generation), they were easy to annoy, just have your own opinions about things.

    I’d say if Bubby wearies of the tax motif, he can really send blood pressures rocketing by going on about how Universal Healthcare is just Medicare for all ages.

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  3. Good morning. There were some old people who lived near me when I was a kid who didn’t seem to like kids. I think just going into their yards would get them upset. My mother was a very traditional person who did try not to impose her conservative ways on me. However, any kind of bad behavior, such as bad language and poor manners, bothered her.

    I don’t remember much contact with older people when I was young other than my mother who acted like an older person and the cranky old people who didn’t like kids. We did go to visit my grandparents who were always glad to see us. I think my mother learned her traditional ways from her mother, but I don’t remember any problems getting along with my mother’s mother when we went there for a visit.

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    1. I am an older person and I hope everyone here will try to mind their manners because an old guy, like me, can get a little offended by people with bad manners.

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    3. I’ve accepted my age by dividing “middle-age” into three categories: early middle age (about 45-55); middle age (55-70); and late middle age (70-forever). Works for me! This came about when, at about 60, someone had the audacity to mention that I wasn’t “middle-aged” any longer. This was stunning to hear, so I made up a more tolerable story.

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  5. OT Last night I heard an interview with a person who said they didn’t want to be involved in government programs for medical coverage because they are apposed to medical insurance and didn’t have any insurance because they didn’t want it. That reminded me of an older relative of mine who also said he didn’t want any insurance. However, my relative didn’t want it because of various unfair practices he thought were associated within insurance. He might have agreed to a good government program. Maybe they should allow people who believe insurance is wrong to apply to be conscientious objectors to insurance and leave them out of the program.

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    2. Regardless of someone’s reason for refusing to purchase coverage, we all pay for their care when they show up in ER. My ex nearly died (at only 61) a couple of years ago from a 7″ tear in his aorta. Three open-heart surgeries later, we the taxpayers, shelled out over
      half a million for his medical care as he’d avoided purchasing health insurance in favor of a new VW convertible and trekking around the country.

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  6. i was never aware of the anger the old folks were showing until it was too late and then i would try to figure out why they cared. i was disrespectful but it was very earnest and sincere. i think if you do what you do out of sincerity rather than just tweaking it has a different effect. it leads to mutual distaste for each others core beliefs. thats different than anger.
    back in my catholic school days i would find ways to raise an eyebrow by adjusting the uniform while making an effort to appear to conform. we had the navy blue cordoroy medium blue shirt navy tie as a daily requirement and i was ok with that in 2nd and 3rd grade but as a guy grows and his fashion sense calls out a few modifications are in order. wide wale cords came in about that time and it was the coolest thing ever to have skin tight short pants with black pointy toed loafers rather than the boring black tie shoes that were the norm. well wing tips and shells came in as well as english walkers bumpers and converse all stars so the shoes were the easy adjustment. they were a gray area at good old nativity of the bvm. those nuns didnt know what to do. hair is always fun. today it is mohawks and purple, when i was a kid it was james dean and elvis pompadores and brilcream. then on to hippy days, first bell bottoms were brought back to me by my mom form barneys in new york in time for the fahsion statement that rocked the halls at hubert olson jr high my first year away form the nunnery. ah it was easy to get a rise. i was always respectful in speaking to old farts and the flying f and loose talk was not an issue. i was a respectful long haired freak who did civil disobedience rather than weathermen tactics.
    today i have parents out here in the snow white burbs look oddly at the heated discussions my children feel compelled to have with me. it looks white to me why do you want to call it gray youlittle twit. it is gray you blind old feeb. is the usual reply.
    taxes…hahah i saw cantor this morning and that is the tactic the gop will use to derail the common good theme obama is championing. in reality it is not a fee it is a tax they say. i think tim pawlenty would be the perfect running mate for romney ready to bow down to the tea party, ready to expalin that he reduced taxes a few fees showed up along the way, but obama is doing it all wrong. they said pawlenty is one of the few people boring enough not to make mitt look like oatmeal. they can stand next to each other and we can have a yawn off. chris christy rubio and others would act like they have charisma and make someone wonder if that should be part of a mans makeup in order to consider him a leader. mitt knows he neednt worry about personality, he has none to contend with. how could anyone be angered about that. he still reminds me of those cartoons where the lips move but the rest of the head stays still. clutch cargo was my favorite.

    could we do a mitt cartoon and show his true self in the next exciting episode of mitt romney , america could be more vanilla and we will just nail all the other groups.gay mexican anti gun poor and enviornmentall concerned. go over there. white old guys who say up with god nra and lower taxes, down with the rest of you. when you talk to them about it they seem to get a little angry but the training has been put in place so they each have their 3 talking points and can go there wherever the conversation goes they try to take it there. its funny to watch and does make them angry when you call them out. lets have fun with the tea party lead the gop is following this election. even roberts has had enough. mitts response,

    Right off the top, Romney delivered one of the tightest lines of his campaign: “What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president of the United States. And that is, I will act to repeal Obamacare.”
    It went downhill from there. Careful to repeat the word “Obamacare” some 18 times throughout his brief remarks, Romney was careless with the facts in his rebuttal.

    point that out and watch the blood boil. they are all talking heads delivering a mantra rather than a thought. have a little fun with it. you can tell when they get mad because they begin to have thoughts and that screws up the presentation.

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    1. Yes, I think those apposing Romney and associated forces in the GOP should have some fun doing this. In fact, I think the occupy movement has been having fun pointing out the bad way Romney and his Wall Street friends are behaving and even some of the bad behavior of Democrats and their Wall Street friends.

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    2. I don’t remember Clutch Cargo, but, boy, that is some low-budget animation. About 2:30 into that clip there’s a scene where when each character is talking the visual shot is of the person being spoken to, so they don’t have to make anybody’s lips move. It’s not even animation, really.

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    3. Funny how his oft-repeated lie, “On Day One, I will repeal Obamacare!” doesn’t seem to garner negative attention given that no president has the power to repeal an act of Congress without 60 votes from the Senate!

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  7. Up until I was 16, my grandfather lived with us – first he and my grandma lived in a whatyacallit – a mother-in-law apartment? – then after my grandma died, it was just him. When we moved “up north,” he moved with us, despite the fact that the house did not have room for 3 girls, 1 boy, 2 parents, and 1 grandfather. (I think my parents tried to convince him to move back to Iowa, but that did not work.) One thing having a grandparent around did for me was give me lots of practice in learning how to annoy old people. Basically, if you have the ability to make lots of smart-aleck remarks and had two sisters who also had that ability and with whom you could laugh hysterically about anything remotely humorous, that was a very good recipe for annoying old people. Not to mention annoying middle-aged people (the parents) and anyone of the male species (my brother, and my cousin who stayed with us one summer). However, I’m pretty sure we never used the word “taxes.”

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      1. No, we moved to town and he didn’t want to live in town, I guess, so he moved to an old peoples’ apartment in his beloved Iowa – Grinnell, I believe.

        Or maybe he was just fed up with living with so many crazy females, although by then one sister was out of the house and the next oldest was almost ready to go.

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  8. Unfortunately I lost all my grandparents before I was out of high school, but it was easy to rile my dad up. Use of sloppy language (i.e., he didn’t like the words “get” or “got”) was a biggie. So was sassing my mom. There was a dark side to getting him worked up however. He was an attorney and was astounding articulate; if you messed with him, he was more than capable of messing with you back!

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      1. Oh yes. My father loved going around and around about stuff. But it was really hard to get the upper hand because he had no problem playing Devil’s Advocate; even if he didn’t agree with a position personally he could argue that position until the cows came home!

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        1. It took me a long time to realize my Dad argued with me just to get me to argue back with him. And I did it to my son and he’s starting to do it back to me.
          I’m so proud! (sniff)

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  9. Morning-
    My Grandma E. was annoyed with me in general I think. Didn’t like it when I tried the ‘gold chain’ look back in the ’70’s and would tell me I was getting fat if I ate candy from the dish she put out. So I just ignored her.
    And Grandpa H, he was kinda fun; he was Santa at the mall and Uncle Sam in 1976.

    Being an ‘old folk’ myself now and working at the college w/ all the kids there, it’s the pants half way down their butts that angers me.
    And many of them are too serious; I try to make jokes in class they just stare at you. Granted, they have things to be concerned about; not only school and tuition and grades and, for some, kids / jobs / spouses but really; try to be a little more engaged in the class. Take those dang ear buds out, put that phone away (no I don’t believe you’re taking notes on it) and at least pretend you care. Otherwise, why are you here?
    Sorry– got off on a rant there.

    Some of the students I’ll kinda tease them about their pants or nose ring. One guy always had a blue tooth in his ear. So whenever I saw him I’d point to it and say ‘You got something in your ear there’ and he’d kinda grin and take it out.

    But one kid got all up in my face when he talked on his cell phone during a play. I asked him to take his cell phone conversation outside and he objected. And from there we created our own disturbance until I just walked away. We made up later.

    I remember my mom once trying to swat me with a flyswatter as I walked by. I think I had sort of mouthed off, but she was on the phone, with the cord (kids, phones used to have cords) so she couldn’t go far.
    Mouthing off or sleeping late; that’s what angered my old folks…

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    2. I’m kinda getting used to the pants halfway down the butt thing, but the Pants Below the Butt? I’m having trouble with that.

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  10. Another OT. My son-in-law, Zack Kline, is doing an event at the Cedar under their Seeder program. This program includes an associate workshop where Zack and his friend Jacob Lawson will give training on improvising music on violin. Then they will preform improvisied duos at the cedar on August 12th and invite the students from the workshop to join them and also invite the Orange Mighty Trio to join them. Here is a link to Zack’s Cedar Seeder program which includes a place to make donations and get tickets.

    http://www.thecedar.org/seeder/zack-kline-and-jacob-lawson-weekend-strings-workshop-and-concert

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    1. This looks super cool. Do you know if they would accept younger students? My next door neighbor is in 7th grade (or is it 8th he’s going into?) – I know he has done some intensive bluegrass fiddle workshops out in Stillwater the last couple of summers and this might be the sort of thing he’d be into to extend his current skills…but wanted to check if this was a “grown ups only” deal first. 🙂

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  11. Most middle-aged and old people I knew as a child and teen-ager were friends of my parents or parents of my friends. I loved most of them and got a long well with them. My own parents were a completely different story; I rebelled at their tyranny all through my teen-age years and I left home four days after turning 18 when I was of legal age. I was a tall, skinny tomboy with what looked like a terminal case of acne, not a cute little thing that was easy to love. I didn’t dress well; how could you in out-of-fashion hand-me-downs? My hair was a mess in their eyes, and they pretty much disapproved of everything I was, believed in and liked. Between them they had so damn many rules that it was impossible to make it through a day without an infraction of some kind, and the punishments they doled out never fit the crime. My sister and I listened to music that dad hated, and usually had the music cranked up pretty high when we were home alone. Every single day when he would return from work the same scene unfolded. He’d storm through the house to get to the record player to turn it off, all the while yelling about the infernal noise. He never caught on to the fact that my sister deliberately would put something extra noisy on just before he was expected home.

    My parents were ill equipped for parenting, period. And as the parents of teen-agers they were particularly stymied as their personal problems overwhelmed them. I think my mother late in life came to understand that, I’m not so sure about my dad. He died a cynical old man who had pretty much alienated every friend he ever had and didn’t have a kind word to say about anyone.

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    1. PJ – this reminds me that my dad had objections to some of my music as well and while I was allowed to listen to “that drivel” in my room, I was not allowed to play some music on my folks’ stereo. My dad didn’t like the Bonnie & Clyde song that was popular back then – the one that ended with all the bullets. He couldn’t stand Bob Dylan or John Denver (too nasally). And pretty much all of “Bridge over Trouble Waters” was nixed for what my dad perceived as sexual innuendos.

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      1. vs, we didn’t have the option of listening in our room, the family had only one record player, and did not have an extensive record collection. My parents both loved Irish music, so I grew up with The Clancy Brothers, Brendan O’Dowda, Dubliners and a few others. My own collection included Mahalia Jackson, Miriam Makeba, Joan Baez and Dylan, and the man I was madly in love with, Tommy Steele. Sigh!

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  12. I always knew I would turn into the grumpy old bastard my father was and I have accomplished it. But in truth other old people irk me more than the young.
    I have always had a talent with old folks which I passed on to both my children, I suppose because we made sure they were around them. But now that I have become one . . .
    Someone should put about Alan Sherman’s “He’s a Rebel”. Is that the right name.

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      1. My favorite verse:

        Rhonda got a haircut,
        The Rebel shaved his beard.
        They were married and had children,
        Which they subsequently reared.
        They moved out to the suburbs
        And they really disappeared.

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  13. “Ain’t” and other non-words like “irregardless” were sure to set teeth on edge and get blood boiling in my near environs as a kid and teenager. Slang was tolerated to some extent, but sloppy language was not (like VS’s house). Grandma was an English teacher, Mom was a choir director – “articulate” is both a verb and an adjective, and you were expected to act on it and be it.

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  15. One of my favorite songs about interaction between the old and the young. Most of you might prefer the Flanders and Swan version, but I love the Limelighters version.

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  16. The first time I annoyed an older person, outside of the family, was in 9th grade. I attended a Catholic high school. Sister Clare Adele, our religion teacher, was going on and on about the Communists and how they used propaganda to control the Russian people. A light bulb went off in my head, my hand shot up and I asked the fatal question. “How are the Communists different than our church? It controls us, tells us what to think, how to live…” My mistake was not watching her face while I was talking. By the time I looked at her, her face was red, mouth half open, when she’d gathered her wits—it didn’t take long, she was screaming at me. I have no idea what she said, I was watching the spittle foaming at the edges of her mouth. My experience with nuns before that had been so trusting and sweet, I could not believe her meltdown. She hated me for the rest of the 4 years. A big score for me with the “bad” kids—gave me entree into a whole new world.

    off to the library now. I need books for the hot weekend. I will try not to offend anyone on the way.

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      1. where is a nun going to get distracted and off a train of thought. a nun is a potential time bomb, job description is dont question, be subserviant, teach these children discipline and how to be like me. going my way and the singing nun were such hits because they showed nuns as people, it had never been seen before.

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  17. OT – Voting for Beth Ann’s Mini Donut Ice Cream. I’ve just discovered (by accident, I swear) that if you vote via Facebook, you can vote over and over again… it doesn’t seem to be keeping track and making you vote only once a day!

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  18. I was such a goody goody, and my parents were so mellow, that about the only thing that would rile them was bringing home a kind of hippie guy I met at the beach (this was central Iowa in 1966) – he was barefoot, shirtless, tan and blond. They were used to appropriately dressed kids (whose parents they knew) on the honor roll. To top it off, he walked into the chandelier (my mom had moved the table to the side for some reason) and knocked one of the glass pieces out and it broke. (I don’t think he was on anything – and I didn’t even know about mj yet.) Later my sister dated a “wild child” type and really got them going.

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      1. I had similarly laid-back parents. Realized about half way through college that about the only thing that might rile them was bringing home a conservative bible-thumper type. And then Mom would have probably only expressed “concern” about my choice…

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  19. I made my mom really mad when I decided I was against the war in Vietnam. I think it was 1965 or late 1966 and I had picked up a new opinion in high school, probably from some teachers. We used to argue about it every afternoon after school. It took her two or three years to agree with me. (It turned out that several of her friends were also working on her at the bookmobile. That was an amazing bookmobile stop. They talked about everything!)
    Otherwise my parents were mostly easy to get along with.

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  20. Dale, that is one taxing good post! You taxing nailed it! I needed a good laugh – thanks!

    I had a very controlled upbringing and I wasn’t very rebellious as a kid. I was well-behaved and didn’t mouth off. Grammar was important, homework and grades were a priority, and I wasn’t allowed much time out with friends while I was in high school. I tended to be very respectful of adults, and I think I usually still am. I did start to question people more in college, but maybe not to the extent Nan took it! I went through a potty-mouth phase in my late teens – trying to fit in with the wrong crowd. I’m glad it didn’t last. I lived with a guy who gave new meaning to the phrase “swear like a sailor.” I learned some choice phrases from him – ones which I’ve never heard anywhere else. You don’t want to hear them. They’ll melt your ears and make your hair curl.

    I’m having trouble with my phone company. I might use some of those choice phrases when I call them tomorrow. It’s that or lose my wireless connection, tax it!

    BTW: I try not to use the rhetorical label “Obamacare.” I know that many liberals use it but if you think carefully, it is a negative label created by conservatives when the national health care plan was first passed into law. I wish liberals would start calling it a national health care plan, which it is. I’m getting off this taxing soapbox now.

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    1. I loved Dale’s post today too. It was so much fun substituting the F-word for all his tax words. I would like (with his permission) to add “flying tax” and “taxed up” to the repertoire. Another thing I loved reading was Clyde calling himself a grumpy old bastard – to which I say – “Clyde, you have never struck me as old!”

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        1. But I have a right to be. Today was the worst day I have ever had with my fm. Not only pain but also spent the day very, very wired.

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  21. THROAT-SINGING ALERT!
    The July National Geographic has a brief but interesting article on the Tuvan people and their dying culture.

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  22. I wanted to post Loudon Wainwright’s “Make Your Mother Mad”, but neither video nor lyrics could I find. Some things still cannot be successfully googled. Whaddaya know.

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  23. great new phrases available.
    go tax yourself
    tax hole
    kiss my tax
    tax off
    he is a taxing idiot
    what a taxhead
    taxing moron
    john edwards taxes his constituents
    its only right that we tax george w bush he did it to us for 8 years
    bend over i want to tax you

    id better stop before i go off the taxing deep end

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      1. very, a tax specialist is very desirable in its own world but it can cause problems in regular home life. knowing which spots to focus on and exactly how to maximize you benifits and use only appropriate deductions can be a heavy burden

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