Tantrumming

Tantrum: a word of unknown origin.

I’ve spoken ill of the dolphin facility director. Having died at age eighty-six, he’s not around anymore. Not, at least, around in the way he used to be. As for where he might be now, and with which not-us folk / beings / spirits if any, people of faith differ, as do people of little-or-no faith.

When I was a child, old(er) folks sometimes asked, “Did I forget myself?” Meaning, were they inadvertently rude, briefly out of character. I myself, despite seasons of prudence and caution, have had episodes—eras!—of being reckless, volatile. Hence, “Did I forget myself?”—the rhetorical question as self-defense—may not, lamentably, be something I can invoke.

Think of qualities ascribed to the non-demented old(er). Kindliness / patience / equanimity / acceptance / appreciativeness / tolerance / tranquility. Also thoughtfulness, able to draw on hindsight. Not to mention frankness / candor / outspokenness, even a cheerful belligerence. Someone, that is, free to speak his mind. Archetypes: wise old man, wizard, guru, teacher, sage. Native Hawaiian kūpuna—elders embodying love / caring / righteousness.

Would that the list of qualities stopped there! But also intransigence / scolding / obstinacy / inflexibility. Slovenliness. Avarice. The senex iratus, all rages and threats, impeding the passion of the young. The senex amans, jealous husband married to a young woman. As T. S. Eliot wrote, “Do not let me hear / Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly.”

Consider—if you of a “certain age” can stand to—Juvenal’s AD second-century catalogue of longevity’s ills, old men “so loathsome a sight that even legacy-hunters turn queasy.” Longevity for Juvenal “the least of among nature’s gifts.” Or think of Aristotle’s AD third-century view of the old as cynical, suspicious, small-minded, stingy, cowardly, fearful, calculating, and malicious.

The old. Though sometimes sullenly silent and withdrawn, they’re often said to be garrulous (Latin garrire, “to prattle on”). As for yours truly, as you may have noticed, such chatter can incarnate in the form of tirades, fulminations, and diatribes.

Being willful: too much will, not enough won’t. Being intemperate. And, often, aware of being intemperate. Refusing to acknowledge being intemperate. Conscious, sometimes, of being unable not to be intemperate.

“Once an adult, twice a child,” they used to say, but what a relief to no longer be a child, the familiar reproach back then, “You’re out of control.” Or, “Get yourself under control.” Or, “Act your age.” The old—stubborn, recalcitrant— are, like children, out there on the margins of the adult world.

Entitlements. Now one can be irascible (Latin ira, “anger”). Irritable, testy, dyspeptic. “I say what I choose— / having nothing to lose / by being a demon, taking a chance. / No punishment. / I can afford / to be mean, cranky and mean, ranting and raving.” Or so argues the (also) vulnerable and sentimental grandmother in my poet-mother’s How Does It Feel to Be Old.

Meantime, don’t overlook the asperity in exasperated. Acerbic, caustic. A sense, not always pleasurable, that there’s no bridge one might not burn.

Temper. And distemper, mixing things in wrong proportions. About what might make one more temperate, think of author-killer Edgar Smith. According to the New York Times, during a parole hearing when Smith was seventy-five, he “was asked what would stop him from committing more violent crimes if he were freed. ‘Old age,’ he replied.” So Smith argued, though unable to prove the point, still incarcerated when he died at eighty-three.

But about the dolphin facility director. They say, “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum” (Don’t speak ill of the dead). That this enjoinder, traced back to Diogenes Laërtius in AD third century, still has legs suggests the living continue to be uneasy about abusing the departed, who surely outnumber us. Who (which? or, what’s left of them, their... remains?) are nonetheless deemed disadvantaged by not being around to protest. Death-muted, they may hear us all too well.

One can imagine—actually, one can only imagine—their reproaches: “You’ve got it wrong, settling scores, hindsight...