Grumpy is a State of Mind

The Jeweler’s Daughter, namely my daughter Lindsay, is enjoying some well-deserved R&R at some beach resort other than here. It’s obvious to me and maybe some of my historically vetted readers who have followed my sometimes sarcastic and twisted sense of how the retail world really is, or life in general, today, and especially the past, are seeing my daughter’s conception of the joys of life and the retail experience. She’s still young (at least by Marco Island’s standards. When I was 66, my older clientele called me “kiddo” so in their eyes that would make my forty-something kid Lindsay a not-yet-walking toddler!), and for the young at age or at heart, life is bliss. Now that I’m 72 (middle-aged by Marco standards), there is not so much bliss when there should be. It’s more like dealing with a lot of unnecessary bull*%@, and if reality is not enough, I now have to deal with AI and the one hundred or so calls and texts about how my $200K loan is only waiting for my return call or signature. The byproduct of that is one becomes prone to the pleasures of being, to a certain degree, a certified Grump. I know it must be true; my daughter called me one in the last issue - I have it in writing!

When I was younger, I dealt with the grumpy up north on a daily basis, even here in “paradise,” and always wondered what could make a person so miserable living or visiting here? Apparently, there are a lot of reasons, like why does my grass grow like it’s on steroids in the summer, or why do the ice cubes always melt in my margarita? When I moved here from Boston in the mid-1990s, I found out fast how grumpy my new neighbors were when they found out I had arrived with three kids. The audacity, my wife and I bringing “pestilence” to their island paradise! It was okay that my immediate neighbor’s lanai was a glorified bird sanctuary that faced my master bedroom and housed about twenty different species of parrots, cockatoos, and maybe a rooster or a chicken or two for all I knew? The noise from them was 24/7 straight; no wonder the previous renters moved out. Did the grumpy make me grumpy? You bet it did, especially when they complained to the police that my kids “disturbed” them while playing in their own backyard.

To get the gist of where I came from and how I came to be, all one has to do is read my “All That Glitters” archives; heaven knows there are plenty of them, more than 25 years' worth. My daughter is correct; some of my topic reasoning may be petty, outlandish, even off color, and yes, I’m sure I bent more than a few noses out of joint, and yes, that was exactly my point to outrage the “Entitled” and also the These, Them and Those, whose only purpose in life is to make the rest of us reasonable peace loving, God fearing folk’s miserable. I was hoping there would be a slight chance that reading my articles would tickle something deep down inside, to what little shred of human decency they had left in their souls, and would not only outrage them but hopefully prevent them from coming into my humble establishment and ruining my employees’ or especially my day. It had honestly become an epidemic, for Pete's sake. I was supposed to be running a jewelry business that should be spreading joy and happiness while I make a living at the same time. It nearly got to a point where I needed a registered psychiatrist who moonlighted as a bouncer to work the sales counter.

You want to know something unbelievable… it worked! (Well, at least ten or fifteen years ago it did). While not a perfect system, not all of “them” would read my article, so some managed to slip through the cracks; some were most likely the ones who could not read at all. My articles that blatantly called these people out honestly kept the problem ones who did read it to a minimum (please don’t honor us with your presence, go forth and spread your idea of joy somewhere else!). All in all, I had more folks comment on how they enjoyed my “unusual sense of humor” and are lifelong customers, who by far outnumber those who did not. The overall redeeming result of my apparent madness was that we now had the quality time to address the nice, understanding, cordial customers while the “unforgiving” stayed away. That was then. I always believed the customer was always right … until they were not. I’m no longer dealing with it.

I’m done, put a fork in me, and color me pretty much retired.

Nowadays, some folks are pretty thin-skinned, even psychotic, where the simple act of having to wait their turn or they can’t have it now can result in a traumatic public spectacle. Not to mention the fireworks of having to inform these lost souls that the current price of gold is why our gold jewelry and everyone else’s in this universe is expensive.

This is 2026, my daughter believes in killing them with kindness, and her threshold of patience when dealing with the rude or unruly is a sight to behold. You don’t want to be around when all her wrong buttons are pushed, believe you me! Talk about how an apple does not fall far from the tree!

I’m told now that I’m no longer a regular fixture around these parts where I spent a lot of time traveling or hanging out here or on my farm in the middle of north central nowhere Florida just sitting on my front porch (you see they don’t call them lanais 300 miles up yonder, it’s a porch!) where I can be as grumpy as I want to be where my only neighbors are a quarter mile away. I only wish the cows, chickens, roosters, and birdlife around me weren’t so darn noisy!

Love and peace to all, have a wonderful summer, and be kind to “The Grumpy Jeweler’s Daughter.”