Time to be the Grouchy Old Man.

During the late 1980s, maybe even into the '90s, there was a great bit on Saturday Night Live, starring Dana Carvey as the "Grouchy Old Man." His bit was that he'd come on the spoof newscast as a commentator, and he'd complain on camera about how much better things were in the old days, and how kids nowadays just don't appreciate what life is really supposed to be like. He'd stagger onstage with fake gray hair and an utterly convincing look of disgust and remonstrate against things like, say, high school kids who drove: "Why, back in my day we'd walk forty miles to school in the snow, whether we had legs or not. And if all that was left of our legs was stumps after all that walking, that just meant we could find our way back by following the blood trails in the snow. That's right, we was all going to school with feet rubbed off, trailing blood from our stumps but that's the way it was and we liked it that way!!!" I just made that up, but that's the sort of thing he used to say, and with great conviction and feeling.

Just so you know where I'm coming from here, I'm not really all that grouchy. I'll accept that people like all sorts of things, and it bothers me not a whit that they do. But there are certain things that I just don't "get." It's not that I see what the attraction is but don't think it's the sort of thing I would enjoy - I just don't understand what people see in it in the first place.

The main one is tattoos. I have absolutely no clue what it is that people see in tattoos. I don't find them attractive in the least, and when they cover large expanses of epidermal real estate they are actually unattractive. Don't get me wrong, I don't care that people do it - after all, it's their body, their business and not mine - but I just don't understand it. I once asked someone to explain it to me and she couldn't. "It's just cool, don't you get it?" wasn't much of an explanation.

Another one is rap music. I have had some of it explained to me, and as lyrical poetry it apparently is quite intricate and complex. I'm actually exposed to it on a fairly regular basis, so between the growing familiarity and the interesting explanation of how it works, it's logical to think I should be gaining some appreciation for it, but things haven't worked out that way. It just doesn't do anything for me. Neither does country music - but I live in NYC, and that means I hear a lot more hip hop than country. So I think more about not getting hip hop than not getting country.

I don't get football. Especially not college football. I vaguely understand the rules of the game, and it's always fun to hang out with friends at a Super Bowl party, drinking beer and crunching chips. But I just don't understand what is so fabulous about the game. The idea is to get the ball from one end of the stadium to the other. The team on defense is supposed to prevent the team on offense from being able to do that. The methods for doing it include lots of physical collisions, ramming, running and occasionally tossing the ball. What is it that makes the game so riveting that people drive hundreds of miles to see them played, or are willing to stand in the freezing cold for hours as part of a tailgate-party-plus-ballgame ritual? I'm told that even though the state of Nebraska is mainly empty, the football stadium at the University seats 100,000 and fills up for home games. Why? I don't mind that most other Americans love football, I just don't understand it.

I wonder why this is. I was born in this country, grew up here. I watched altogether too much television as a kid. I played sports with my friends growing up (played badly, but still played). I listened to music, socialized - and still do. I try to keep up with what's going on and keep myself informed. And yet I just don't "get" things that wide swaths of the country absorb and assimilate with apparently no effort. What could be the reason?

Does this make me a grouchy old man?