CRANKY'S SCHOLARSHIP

The world keeps coming up with new ways to tell the Cranky Old Guy that he is coming down the stretch. Such things as AARP membership applications, iPods, and ever slower running times are just a few of the ways one message is being pounded home: “Your time is running out, buddy.”

Now another set of voices has begun to enhance the chorus. The old alma maters are sending communications about such things as “estate gifts” and “legacy bequests.” A recent communication from one alma mater ask the Cranky Old Guy if he wanted information about: gifts of real estate; charitable remainder trusts; gift annuities; gifts through wills and living trusts; gifts of life insurance; and gifts of retirement plans. Gifts, gifts, gifts.

The communication said a Cornerstone Society of donors who have made planned gifts to the school had been set up. Seems like Gravestone Society would be a more appropriate term.

Such entreaties for the Cranky Old Guy’s money are premised on a falsehood: that the Cranky Old Guy has money. Some of his contemporaries went on to fame and fortune. Cranky went on to a modest pension that local real estate taxes are devouring.

Still, Cranky is moved by the need to buttress the endowment of his rapacious alma mater, who incidentally can’t seem to produce any sort of sports winner that Cranky can identify with. And Cranky likes the thought of leaving something behind with his name on it.

So Cranky is contemplating “Cranky’s Scholarship.” Ideally, the scholarship should go to an individual similar to the young Cranky. In other words, the individual should have a fondness for lower intensity alcohol—that is, beer—an aversion to strenuous academic challenges, an intense but largely unrequited interest in the opposite sex (okay, to be politically correct, in any sex), and a deep, profound disrespect for any type of authority.

The problem with Cranky’s Scholarship is that it won’t be very lucrative. About the only spare wealth Cranky has is around $600 in aging U.S. Government bonds that he was “encouraged” to buy backed when he worked for the bureaucracy (“Our office has to have 100 percent participation; you don’t want to be the lone holdout, do you?”). But the alma mater says every little bit helps, so how do you guys want it: a charitable remainder trust, an annuity, outright? And Cranky does get a tax break, right?

DSH