Turn back before it’s too late.

*

What else is a fella to do?

Who, at 74, is one year older than Walter Matthau when he made Grumpy Old Men.

With co-star Ann-Marget, who never stopped smiling.

Two years later, they do it again with Grumpier Old Men, with Sophia Loren, who never stopped smiling.

Would one Grumpy Old Woman be asking too much?

And Grammarly, what’s your problem with fella? You don’t slap a purple line under, dude.

I know; I click dismiss, and the purple line disappears.

But I like to play by the rules if the rules make sense.

That’s what nice fellas do.

But Ann Margret’s & Sophia Loren’s are changing the world.

Because someone thinks newer is better.

Our town’s mayor is a woman. The first woman to run the city. She smiles a lot. I’m a progressive fella, so I voted for her.

She couldn’t leave well enough alone.

One of her new ideas was a new leaf pick-up program. The rule used to be to rake the leaves into the street. The workers would not scoop them up if they were on the boulevard.

Two years ago, pushed by the mayor, the street department bought a new-fangled leaf vacuum truck. Now, the leaves must be out of the street, ON the boulevard, but no more than five feet from the curb.

Yesterday, I raked some leaves from the street onto my lawn.

Really?

I came into the house to write a blog about this ridiculous new program and tried to log into WordPress. I received this message: you must create a two-step verification to continue.

Ugh.

It’s bad enough that I must keep changing my password every six months. Now, I need to keep my phone handy when I check my dwindling bank account. Someone had to pay for that new street cleaner. Or when I want to rant on my blog. And remember whether it was Tommy or Jimmy who was my best friend when I was 10.

Speaking of two steps, I used to be able to unscrew any lid with one movement. I could hit a baseball and golf ball a long way for my size — strong wrists from scooping ice cream at sixteen. I couldn’t cook, but I could unscrew.

Wouldn’t you want this fella around?

Now, I’m reduced to this.

*

My friend Will, 92, in Assisted Living, said to me the other day, “There can’t be room-controlled thermostats in his complex because no one understands how they work.”

And then he told me a hilarious story about how he and Harland, also a resident and 98, were sitting around his apartment last week, and suddenly, from a corner, Alexa started speaking up. The digital assist box that housed Alexa had arrived a few weeks earlier as a gift from Will’s nephew. Neither could figure out how to silence her, so they threw a blanket over the table.

That’s Will and Harland at a recent Life Long Learning Seminar on Death and Dying. You can read my stories on this course here.

They are the anti-curmudgeons. Each does his best to keep up with the changes the world throws at them ever-increasingly. But they also have begun to hold many things lightly. And each has a sense of humor, whether about death or Alexa.

Years ago, as they neared Curmudgeonville, they must have turned around before it was too late.

And now serve as role models.

As do Ann Margret (82) and Sophia Loren (89), still smiling.

Postscript

Our community’s Mayor, Lorraine, is widely acclaimed as the best mayor in decades and handily won re-election.

The new leaf vacuum program, bugs worked out the first year, works like a charm.

Tommy, of course.

But I changed the question.