Hateful Curmudgeon

Todd Hayen

Sadly, I have now become a hateful curmudgeon. I’ve always been a bit of a curmudgeon, at least since after the age of 60, but only recently have I become hateful.

I admit this reluctantly, and I must say that I still consider this description to be largely selective, meaning I don’t think I am hateful to everyone (being a curmudgeon, however, typically applies with no discrimination). And even the word “hateful” isn’t quite accurate. I don’t HATE anyone, for any reason. This is more like disgust, disagreement, and incredulousness (I don’t know if that is even a word).

I have come to this realization after several years of personal observation. Obviously, the Covid situation had a huge impact on my feelings of “disgust, disagreement, and incredulousness.” But it wasn’t just Covid, it is all that has been swirling around that insanity. Engaging with the craziness during that time was like following the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz, but not with it leading to Oz, but rather with it leading to Scorched Earth. Have I become a Black Pill nihilist? Many would think so. Isn’t a “Hateful Curmudgeon” a Black Pill nihilist? Not necessarily.

Recently I got into a yelling match with an asshole driver in a Tim Horton’s parking lot (for those of you who are not Canadian, Tim Hortons is a ubiquitous fast-food chain appearing on nearly every street corner in Canada). I had purchased my sausage sandwich and pulled into a space to eat it; only there was no way to discern what a parking space was.

It had just snowed about 10 inches, and the lot was freshly plowed but was still covered enough that the space markers were not visible. I pulled in between two parked cars, who were not in spaces but rather straddling spaces. In fact, just by chance, I was indeed in a marked space (only because the two cars had straddled the line, leaving the middle space intact.

Of course, I didn’t know this at the time and only discovered it when the asshole started yelling at me to move over. I opened my car door to yell back and saw I was right against the space line. According to the yelling man, I was taking up two spaces. And he wouldn’t shut up. He was honking his horn, and calling me every name in the book, “Move your f__king car!!! You’re taking up two spaces!!” In fact, I could not move because I was about two feet away from the cars next to me, so I just had to leave (I could not show him the line I was parked up against to prove I was in the correct space).

I went berserk. Although I refrained from using the same vulgar language he directed at me, I did raise my voice. I kept screaming, “Stop yelling at me!!” He stopped and looked at me like I had gone mad, which I had. Did I hate him? Maybe so. Was I a curmudgeon? Most definitely.

The incident scared me a bit.

Never in my life have I ever puffed up to someone like that. I seem to have lost all patience for that sort of behaviour (his). “I’m mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore!!” If I had managed to completely lose my marbles I would have stormed over to his car and punched him out.

Hopefully, it never would come to that (punching someone out) because it would be very easy for almost anyone (weaklings and most women included) to beat me to smithereens. I am tall and menacing (good for curmudgeons), but I am not strong and certainly not skilled in the art of self-defence/offence. Again, I have not reached the point of expressing that sort of anger. I didn’t even use curse words when I was responding—which says something, a little bit at least, about control.

So, I just walk around, tensed up, and wound up, itching for a fight. I have come to believe that everyone I see is crazy, everyone I see is a potential threat, and everyone I see is as dumb as a box of rocks. Of course, people can quickly change my assessments with contrary behaviour, a little shrew squeak, or some other indication they are on “the right side of things.” But that usually doesn’t happen unless I am engaged with them in some meaningful way. Which isn’t often these days.

This is all new to me. Needless to say, I didn’t live this way before the Big C era (now “Big C” means Covid, not cancer). I pretty much bopped through life believing the opposite of what I believe now. Then, everyone I ran into was just A-OK, no one was crazy (unless they were having a conversation with a lamppost), and people were not stupid unless they clearly indicated otherwise—and even if they did, I would give them the benefit of the doubt.

When the Big C hit, and when I reached the point of “knowing better” (which didn’t take too long), the first thing I started to assume was that anyone wearing a mask was stupid (the crazy and the threat came later). Now, they don’t even have to be wearing a mask—everyone now is stupid until proven otherwise. I know this isn’t a good thing. And I know I am wrong (I know there are many shrews out there that I run into). But remember, I am now a hateful curmudgeon, and that’s how hateful curmudgeons see the world. Crazy, threatening, and stupid.

I wonder often that even if I did not feel this way before, that maybe people have always been crazy, a threat, and stupid (not EVERYONE of course, but many of them). It doesn’t seem like anything has really happened to change people into crazy, threatening, and stupid people—but lots has happened to make it easier to recognize them as such.

But still. I am going to hold onto the hope that this just isn’t so. That there actually is something in the water (so to speak) that is making people like this, and that in a normal world, they wouldn’t be.

So maybe if that normal world ever returns, people will be normal. Meaning only small percentages of them would be crazy, a threat, and as stupid as a box of rocks. And in that normal world, I would not be a hateful curmudgeon. There’s wishful thinking for you. And as the mother of my first wife used to say, “Wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster.”

Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here