All of a sudden and just like that, I seem to have become an “Old Guy.” I don’t mind, really. It’s an interesting stage of life.

This is what my heart desires: a chance to relax, to sit back (literally), to let someone else rule the world with all its sticky problems. Well, not a certain “someone else,’’ but let’s set that aside.

I stand ready to feed the birds, to separate the plastic from the cardboard, to press the clicker as long as it takes to find something good to watch. I won’t give up, ever. I’ll just lower my standards.

Oh, I’ll squawk from time to time, like an old crow watching the world go by from my high tree branch. “I know what they should do,” I’ll say, but likely no one listens.

I shook my fist at our aspiring overlords in my last column, but as far as I know Moneybags Musk has not reconsidered his shady involvement in national and world politics. I look back to what the Gilded Age might teach us. I think reformer President Teddy Roosevelt would have punched him in the nose.

One of the things I’m watching from my high perch is a political and cultural moment. Call it “The Men Strike Back.” Or, “Make America Male Again.” Women have been making gains for decades, and men are outraged that they have been rolling their eyes at us, calling us dumb when we do dumb things, and insisting that we should do our “share” of the housework — which we happen to think we are already doing, given that the crucial part of football season is here.

There are darker things to account for, but denial now reaches the highest levels.

Men are making a last stand over sharing power with women: the likes of Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Taylor Swift, the stars of “Wicked” or, egad, Oprah. Young men are particularly worked up, but they are barely past the point in life where they think the solution to problems is to punch a wall. This is their moment. Many walls will be punched in the next few years.

Some Old Guys have taken to the barricades too, but I don’t know. I think that goes against our nature. As the sun sets in the West, along with our testosterone, an awful lot of Old Guys realize that they are not superior to the women in their lives, if they ever were.

I remember years ago, at a family reunion, the sight of two retired uncles merrily sneaking sweets. Their spouses had taken charge of watching their diets for their heath’s sake. They were boys again, rascals, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Responsibilities were shifting, and I think they loved it.

Ronald Reagan, who chopped wood and posed on horseback to look manly in his later years, called his wife “Mommy” in private, although not during the State of the Union address, thank God.

I imagine that First Lady Barbara Bush gave George H.W. Bush an earful at night when he’d sprung some dopey idea on the nation. This is where Donald Trump, who in his old age is angry as a honey badger beset by fire ants, suffers from having a younger trophy wife. She’s not going to be the one who says, with a withering look, “You said WHAT about Greeenland?”

Dede, the first lady of our particular household, is more subtle. When my thinking is off and I run a “bright idea” past her, she just says, “I don’t know …” and leaves it at that, opening the door just a bit for my doubts and insecurities to go to work. Given time, I realize it would be no good to sell everything and move to the Amazon rainforest, since I don’t like hot weather. Thus epic fails are averted.

There is a time and a season for everything. Men who held power in their working days are now out hitting golf balls and then searching for them. They have left the fairway.

Our Golfer-in-Chief should be with them, but the people have spoken and here we are. I have old friends who are posting their daily outrage online. My heart is with them, but I can’t keep up. Four years of this is going to test my nerves, spleen, olfactory glands, everything, all major organs and cellular functions.

A therapist I once consulted for a case of midlife mopiness told me that as people grow older, they tend to become more of what they are. He meant the nice ones become sweeter, and the mean ones become only meaner.

To which I add: Uh-oh.

Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.