The Uncle Pat in Me Talking
This morning I was crushed in with 50 strangers on my morning commute, when I was hit with the most obnoxious case of headphone spray I'd yet experienced. I felt like my grumpy uncle Pat, who looked at me during the summer of 1986, holding my Sony Walkman, which was nearly the size of a cigar box, and weighed at least five pounds, blasting Wham! into my blue foamed headphones, that COVERED my ears. He looked at me and said, "You kids are going to GO DEAF with those contraptions in your ears." He was the ULTIMATE grumpy old man and he was in his thirties to forties. Still is. Grumpy, that is. I remember nearly rolling my eyes at his SHEER IGNORANCE. Those OLD FOGIES. GET WITH THE TIMES.
This morning, with a young man behind me, with the music pulsating out of his earphones, so that I could DECIPHER the LYRICS, those VERY WORDS came to my mind. I felt very grumpy and old indeed. It's happening, I thought. I'm at that deviding line.
I am 34. People who are older than me will say that I am still a youngn'. People who are younger than me will think I'm over the hill. It's that particular place on the age scope. Still considered "young enough", but dangerously close, if not off the cliff already, to being "out of touch." I have been consciously fighting this. Thinking: DON'T JUDGE. Don't be like those people who get angry because time is passing them by and what's new and hip not only doesn't apply to them, but they don't UNDERSTAND it. Just GO WITH IT. But it's happening. I don't watch TV and that already throws me out of the spectrum of what is generally known and discussed. Graham and I went to an event a couple of weeks ago where Jon Stewart appeared (to near Beatles fanatic screaming, I might add) and proceeded to make a number of jokes about TV commercials and other references. They were lost on me. It was weird.
Then there's the ever increasing technology. Usually when you say the word technology, my eyes glaze over almost immediately. Although I am using a computer at this very second and I am "plugged in" through the internet and on line newspapers and magazines, I don't get into discussing matters of "bandwith" or "wysiwyg." I have a friend who almost soley communicates through text messaging on her cellphone. I've responded to her, but not without serious effort, where I've erased the message by accident, or created even MORE creative spelling errors than usual, all with intermittant cursing. There hasn't been a moment when I wished I had just pushed the ONE BUTTON it takes to CALL her and just TALKED. It would have saved SO MUCH TIME.
Even by writing this very blog entry, I am sounding like an OLD CRONE. It's TRUE. I am here to out myself. I don't own an iPod (though I will admit to wanting one). I don't believe that e-mail is the same thing as a phonecall. I miss handwritten letters. I LIKE albums and even CDs. I still make mix tapes on occasion! I hate Myspace. Seriously. I have a profile, but the junkmail is TOO MUCH. And I do wish, when I have bodies cramped against me on either side, that whoever is listening to his iPod at TOP VOLUME, they'd turn it down. I know that's the UNCLE PAT in me talkn', but he was bound to come out at some point. That's the beauty of being REALLY YOUNG, you can't imagine that the old man raising his cane at you in righteous indignation is just a sample of what lays in wait for you, twenty, thirty years down the line.
This morning, with a young man behind me, with the music pulsating out of his earphones, so that I could DECIPHER the LYRICS, those VERY WORDS came to my mind. I felt very grumpy and old indeed. It's happening, I thought. I'm at that deviding line.
I am 34. People who are older than me will say that I am still a youngn'. People who are younger than me will think I'm over the hill. It's that particular place on the age scope. Still considered "young enough", but dangerously close, if not off the cliff already, to being "out of touch." I have been consciously fighting this. Thinking: DON'T JUDGE. Don't be like those people who get angry because time is passing them by and what's new and hip not only doesn't apply to them, but they don't UNDERSTAND it. Just GO WITH IT. But it's happening. I don't watch TV and that already throws me out of the spectrum of what is generally known and discussed. Graham and I went to an event a couple of weeks ago where Jon Stewart appeared (to near Beatles fanatic screaming, I might add) and proceeded to make a number of jokes about TV commercials and other references. They were lost on me. It was weird.
Then there's the ever increasing technology. Usually when you say the word technology, my eyes glaze over almost immediately. Although I am using a computer at this very second and I am "plugged in" through the internet and on line newspapers and magazines, I don't get into discussing matters of "bandwith" or "wysiwyg." I have a friend who almost soley communicates through text messaging on her cellphone. I've responded to her, but not without serious effort, where I've erased the message by accident, or created even MORE creative spelling errors than usual, all with intermittant cursing. There hasn't been a moment when I wished I had just pushed the ONE BUTTON it takes to CALL her and just TALKED. It would have saved SO MUCH TIME.
Even by writing this very blog entry, I am sounding like an OLD CRONE. It's TRUE. I am here to out myself. I don't own an iPod (though I will admit to wanting one). I don't believe that e-mail is the same thing as a phonecall. I miss handwritten letters. I LIKE albums and even CDs. I still make mix tapes on occasion! I hate Myspace. Seriously. I have a profile, but the junkmail is TOO MUCH. And I do wish, when I have bodies cramped against me on either side, that whoever is listening to his iPod at TOP VOLUME, they'd turn it down. I know that's the UNCLE PAT in me talkn', but he was bound to come out at some point. That's the beauty of being REALLY YOUNG, you can't imagine that the old man raising his cane at you in righteous indignation is just a sample of what lays in wait for you, twenty, thirty years down the line.
posted by Summer Pierre at
12:05 PM
2 Comments:
Here's to Uncle Pat! What was hip when we were young was 99% crap, the same as what is hip now. Besides unhip is the new hip so I say we all just go with it.
I remember the way we used to communicate through smoke signals using a blanket and a fire and dawg gone it we liked it that way!Then two cans and string came along ,that sure was something yes sirree bob.You young folks don't know this but LP records came long before the record players. We played our records by spinning them on the finger with one hand while using a finger nail as the needle. The sound would travel up the arm to the internal speakers in the skull and you know dawg gone it we liked it that way!
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