By I write this on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025—the day many members of my family insist is my 73rd birthday.
It’s not.
My son Richard was born on my 39th birthday — Friday, Sept. 13, 1991. I gave what had been my birthday to him. Any family celebration on the anniversary of that day is for him, not me. I’ve had 39 birthdays. That’s all.
Art Marmorstein, local columnist
Still, despite not having any birthdays, I somehow get older. All the signs are there. Plenty of old-man aches and pains. I’ve never had a serious sports injury, but, through the decades, dozens of minor wrestling, basketball, running and diving injuries have added up. I hurt all the time. And then there’s the biggest sign of old age: increased grumpiness.
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Making us grumpy old men even grumpier is the fact that we’re so misunderstood.
“You’re just suffering from age-related biological changes to the brain,” they tell us. “You’re only complaining because you’ve got IMS — irritable male syndrome.”
Garbage.
We old men are grumpy because we remember when things were better. We’re grumpy because things could so easily be better again if only people would listen to us. And we’re irritable not because of some bogus syndrome, but because people keep doing things that irritate us.
For one thing, people could quit mumbling. When we were young, you didn’t have to constantly ask people to repeat themselves. Also, people once had names that were easy to remember. You never had to have any of those awkward conversations where, try as you might, you couldn’t quite place someone who seemed to know you really well.
Not only that, it seems that someone has deliberately introduced defects into many common products. Things like keys and glasses disappear far more often than they used to.
Don’t think someone is deliberately trying to irritate us old men? How do you explain daylight saving time then? It saves no daylight. It saves no energy. It has no advantages at all, and it throws people off schedule. Accidents increase both with the “spring forward” and the “fall back” changes. Daylight saving time literally kills people. And for what? I’m sure they’re targeting us old men who have particular problems adjusting to changes of this kind.
And then there’s the irritating trend of starting school before Labor Day. The last weeks of August and the first days of September should be outdoors. Late summer is time to enjoy lakes, parks, pools and hiking trails — and it’s the traditional time for family vacations.
Now you might think that starting school early would make no difference to us grumpy old men. We don’t have to be in school ourselves, after all. But the early start of school makes for a premature end of summertime activities. Pools and parks close. They can’t stay open if your seasonal staff is back at the books. And, once school starts, there aren’t enough patrons anyway.
And what a slap in the face the early school start is to South Dakota’s tourism industry! For many businesses, losing those final weeks of the traditional tourist season is the equivalent of having a bad storm take out a couple of weeks of the Christmas shopping season. It makes a big difference to the bottom line. The early school start costs South Dakota businesses millions. Tax revenue takes a big hit, too.
But it’s kids who pay the biggest price. We’ve got a childhood obesity epidemic, way too much tendency for kids to stay inside and play computer games all day already, and, when the weather is perfect for outdoor activities, we put them back in the classroom? Why? And for what?
So that schools can end the first semester before Christmas break and still have “even” fall and spring semesters? To accommodate fall sports? To allow teachers to have time to cover more material and help their students get better scores on spring standardized tests?
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None of this convinces me.
In late summer, parks and playgrounds should be filled with the sounds of children playing and, when instead they stand empty, well, I’ve a reason to be grumpy. And it’s not IMS.
