Rosemary Busts A Move

I spent a very nice weekend just hanging out at the house getting some things done and in my leisure time… I delighted in working on a JIGSAW PUZZLE! Its been a while since I put one of those together, and although I don’t live in an assisted living community – I do enjoy toiling on them while listening to the ‘Singers and Swing’ channel on cable – It’s very pleasant music. Regardless of the theme of the song, the singers manage to sound as perky as a lottery winner. Sometimes I will hear a female voice crooning about “how her man has been treatin’ her bad” – but she’s singing it like Julie Andrews from the Sound of Music.

I don’t know what those folks were hopped up on back in the day, but it sure took the edge off of things apparently.

As I’m sitting at my dining table listening to Rosemary Clooney singing, ” Hey There,” it occurs to me that this is not usual. Most Gen-Xers like myself are hovering precariously between 80′s big band ballads and the Black-Eyed Peas. My mind then wanders. I imagine myself 70 years old, driving my little brother’s future children home after a trip to Braum’s and JoAnn Fabrics to find something floral – when I hear the Divinyls classic, “I Touch Myself,” on the oldies station and I excitedly tell the kids how I used to dance in a cage at a popular techno bar to this very song. They of course find me prudish and somewhat out of touch, but I stand my ground and belt out the lyrics to “Pour Some Sugar On Me.”

It’s okay – I am very comfortable with my generationalIy challenged music preferences. We all end up in the same place eventually. It’s only a matter of time when today’s 5th graders will be 75 and 80 years old, risking serious hip fractures as they “cut a rug” to Boom Boom Pow. Intellectually, I know this WILL happen -Lady GaGa, Ne-Yo, and Cradle Of Filth will be blaring from the dance halls of retirement homes everywhere in the not so distant future – and Oh-My-God, would I like to be alive to see that.

End Days

Why does getting older seem to be marked by an irrational fear of all things modern and technological? It is hard to imagine, but I’m sure at some “later” point in my life I will probably hear myself saying – “Anti-gravity boots! That’s footwear of the Devil!” At what age exactly does technology lose its status as, harmless tools of convenience, and become instead, a demonic entity that occupies seemingly benign electronics?

My grandmother never owned a VCR, answering machine, coffee pot or air conditioner.

She said she didn’t believe in them…like they were an “untruth” – an urban myth like the yeti or chupracabra.

I tried to show her that they do indeed exist – you see them everywhere. “We’re not talking about the tooth fairy grandma, these things can be found in catalogs.” She would get fairly pissy about it too, if you brought up how she lived like prairie folk. To her, appliances represented a conspiracy of evil – where unsuspecting innocents would become mindless drones, controlled by highly evolved and sentient devices.
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