Nostalgia inside out

This came up on Facebook recently:  “People born in the 50’s have lived in seven decades, two centuries and two millenniums (sic).  We had the best music, fastest cars, drive-in theaters, soda fountains, and happy days.  And we are not even that old yet.  We’re just that cool.”

Sounds a little desperate, doesn’t it?  A little grasping. 

I mean really.  “We’re just that cool”?!  Sounds like something Eric Cartman would say.

If you have to announce it, you’ve already diminished your claim.  When did you ever hear any truly cool person claiming to be cool?  News flash – if they did, they were automatically disqualified from the category.

John Wayne?  Katharine Hepburn?  James Dean? Grace Kelly?  We knew they were cool.  They were not concerned with it.  That’s bad form.  Mick Jagger? John Lennon?  Forgetaboutit!

Also, if you break down that Facebook proclamation, what’s really there?  Having lived through decades and across centuries in and of itself is not sufficient to bestow coolness.  Although tortoises are cool.  And the Parthenon. 

You cannot diminish the music, that’s true. Elvis.  The Beatles.  Lynyrd Skynyrd. Jimi Hendrix.  Janice Joplin.  Aretha Franklin.  Come on!

But also, the Black Keys.  JohnLegend.  Nora Jones.  Uh, Maroon 5?  OK.  I’m in foreign territory here, but I’m making a point! 

We did have some cool cars back in the day.  Matter of fact, Mr. Plath and I still have my dad’s ’63 Corvette.  Hard to argue with a Split Window Coupe.  Do you think I’m cooler now that I’ve mentioned it?  Maybe I should have told you sooner. 

The past tense though – “we had the fastest cars.”  Even the goober who penned the post gave himself away with that.  Maybe we were bringers of cool, but we don’t have exclusive rights to it.

Drive-in theaters?  That’s it?  That’s what we’re gonna wave in people’s faces and say, “Neener Neener!”? 

I just think this guy was having a lonely night with Andy and Opie and his high school year book.  And all he could come up with was soda fountains!  “Happy Days”…was he referring to the Good Ole Boy heydays of men dominating everything or the Viet Nam war?  He surely lost his train of thought.

Dude!  If you want to put a generation on a pedestal, you might mention the first artificial heart, unveiling the structure of DNA, eradicating smallpox or pioneering organ transplants? 

Space exploration!  Duh!

Boomers can point with a sense of pride to the Civil Rights movement, inception of the environmental movement or the women’s liberation movement – even though, yes, all of those are still works in progress – we tipped the dominoes.

It just makes us older folks – “we’re not even that old yet” – (he didn’t realize what including those telltale qualifiers does to his credibility) seem stuck.  Too much looking back and saying, “Me, me, me!”

Funny thing is, I agree with the guy.  We are pretty cool.  But it’s completely uncool to demand the acknowledgement when there is so much cool stuff going on around us.  So much talent.  So much creativity.  And energy! 

Start with the internet and your Smart Phone.  A library in your pocket!  Wireless everything.  GPS. 
Jump from there to all manner of technology.  If you can live without it…well face it – You cannot.  I don’t want to go without the backup camera in my car.  Or Netflix!  Pandora!  Very cool.

I have a golf app that tells me I’m farthest from the hole.  Again.  And what would life be without Words with Friends?

I don’t think I’m the only Boomer who orders her meds online.  They bring them to the house for me!  Vegetables at a keystroke.  And shoes!!  Car parts.  Puppy food.  J

We had our glory days, to be sure.  But the beat goes on and thank God for that!  We are in the capable hands of some extremely cool younger people. 

They’re making some cool cars – especially those retro Mustangs – and face it, IMAX tops the drive in.  A Frappuccino beats a root beer freeze, sometimes.

Their enlightened attitudes toward the treasure of their parents and grandparents speaks well of them.


I’ll bet they’d even like Neil Young – “Old man, look at my life.  I’m a lot like you were.”

Big Nosey Brother

I went ahead and put some silver tape over the webcam eyeball on my computer.  It was creeping me out.  Staring all day long.  Geez!

For a long time I resisted the urge to give it the finger, or stuff it with Silly Putty.  I mean really, who would be watching me?  That’s just paranoid, right?

Most of the time I forget about it. 

Anyway, what’s to watch?  Mostly I just sit here alone pensively gazing at the sky, thinking about writing.  Putting off writing.  Thinking about rewriting what I haven’t yet written. 

I interact with the cats, sometimes by choice.  Other times they mandate conversation, not to mention intervention. 

So whoever’s on the other side of that sinister peep hole may have witnessed an occasion or two when my features abruptly morphed from those of a docile, mildly alert bus rider, into the bug-eyed contorted expression of a frenzied waitress, arms outstretched trying to save a teetering glass of iced tea with lemonade – my Arnold Palmer – from overturning onto the keyboard.   

And now that I have Pandora and Stevie Ray Vaughn, my afternoons are livelier:  I sing as loud as I want and dance from the waist up in my chair on wheels in the privacy of … uh oh.  There’s that one-eyed minion.  Relentless!  Clicking its digital tongue. 

Right about the time I talked myself out of the slinking suspicion that Hal was paying attention that day I when ate all the leftover potato salad for lunch, this guy, Christopher Soghoian, “privacy researcher,” came on TED Talks prattling on about, “Ooooh!  They’re watching!” 

Of course they are, Chris!  Why wouldn’t they be watching?  Warehousing my scintillating documents?  Transcribing my daily phone conversations with telemarketers about the valuable opportunities to refinance the house or have the chimney swept.  I’m as interesting as the next guy.  I’m vital. 

Soghoian says that because drug lords and terrorists buy their computers from Best Buy just like the rest of us, our stuff is just as likely to be tapped as theirs is. 

Soghoian says that with the latest commercially available spy technology super snoopers can activate a person’s computer webcam remotely, without her knowledge. 

Same with the internal microphone.  Soghoian says you don’t have to be a journalist or activist or dissident to draw the attention of the NSA, our homegrown version of Boris and Natasha. 

I hope they like Lynyrd Skynyrd.

But here’s the thing.  My internet search history could move me up on the Must See list.  It’s all innocent you understand.  Purely for research.  But sometimes I pursue an eyebrow-raising line of inquiry.  Like the time I was preparing to write about online dating.  The stuff I found is strictly “eyes only,” if you know what I mean.

And, since writing that column, I get a bunch of unsolicited emails telling me about the singles in my area who are waiting to hear from me.  Yikes.  Where are they waiting, exactly?  Are they working in shifts like so many Norman Bates’s with their eyes to a technological hole in my wall?

One of the leaders in the burgeoning industry of spyware for sale is GammaGroup, headed by Martin Munch.  Soghoian showed a photo of Munch standing next to a laptop, presumably his own.  On close inspection of the picture, you can see that Munch has taped over the webcam!  OMG.

Another group of hackers for hire blatantly call themselves “Hacking Team.”  They boast of their ability to overcome encryption with untraceable stealth. 

Now that I’ve looked them up, will they be looking me up too?  Let’s face it; they could mistake me for a spy, or a hit man!  I fit the profile:  I have no memory of my life before retirement.  High school principal?  That could be an implanted recollection.  Yet here I am in small town America, minding my own business!

Unnerved, but undaunted, I have taken evasive action.  First, the tape.  Next, I’ve branched out in my password creation.  That’s right.  Now I use both cats’ names, all one word, with an occasional capital letter and percent sign!  Ha ha!

Yes!  Because in theory…no, in reality, they could be tracking my keystrokes right this very minute.

!@$#%6^#!$$%^&*   


HA!  Take that Big Nosey Brother!

Last wishes playlist

 

I remember when my grandma announced that she had finalized the plans for her funeral.   

I was about seven years old and wearing her pheasant-feathered pillbox hat with a beaded necklace and matching brooch pinned to my t-shirt.  I had selected her “rose luster” lipstick and drawn it on mostly within the confines of my lips.   

Completing my ensemble was her stole, made not just from the hides of a couple of hapless minks, but from their pelts intact, replete with tiny mink feet, claws, and a head with beady black eyes and a mouth that was converted to a clamp so it could bite its own tail and hold itself in place. 

As you can see my grandma had flair.  All her Sunday dresses boasted matching shoes and handbags.  She kept her waist-length red hair braided just so and curled around her head forming a crown befitting her status in the family.   

She appreciated the finer things.  She would have been among the first to avail herself of the newest advances in the field of funeral science.  And the last to be lowered into the ground without her face on. 

Grandma never settled for the mundane; she served every meal on her best dishes.  Franciscan.  Dogwood pattern.   

I’m pretty sure she ironed her sheets, so it follows that her dainties must have been wrinkle-free too, though I never saw them.  I can assure you they were not exposed to public viewing on the clothesline with my grandpa’s formidable sox and boxers.  

If I caught her in the right mood, as I had on this day, she’d let me noodle through her closet at will.  On this particular morning, she’d been preoccupied with papers and brochures at her desk, licking the tip of her pencil, erasing and rearranging items on a list.  

I was just slipping into a pair of open-toed black suede platform pumps when she made her proclamation.   

Even at seven, I knew it was weird.  But she wasn’t going to leave such important details to discussion or debate.  And no one else was there to hear it.  She’d picked her dress, shoes, jewelry, even her nail polish.  

Did I mention that my grandma wasn’t ill?  Not disabled.  No, she was bright and perfectly healthy, if a little odd-turned. 

She had an excruciatingly screechy voice.  But she loved the Lord and every Sunday she showed it by singing louder than anyone else in the congregation.  So it was no surprise to me that she also picked the hymns to be played when she would inevitably be laid out for viewing. 

(“Gladly the Cross I’d Bear” was first on her program.  To her dismay, I said I’d never heard of a cross-eyed bear.  With a harrumph she scratched it leaving only “Amazing Grace.”)   

You can see why, when I read about the latest Swedish casket technology, the first person who popped into my mind was my Grandma, even if it came along too late for her to benefit:  Stockholm music and video equipment store owner Fredrik Hjelmquist has designed a coffin withbuilt-in speakers linked to a music playlist that can be updated by the living.  That’s right.  Wi-Fi for the dead. 

Grandma would have loved it.  So I’m including it in my funeral plans.  It’s not that I’m ready to tuck it in, you understand.  I’m forward thinking, that’s all.  Like Grandma, I don’t want anyone else planning my parties.   

And, like her, I have some detailed last wishes.  For one thing, don’t let just anyone do my hair.  I’ve been with Mr. Paul for so many years now; no one else can cover the gray like he does.  Light mascara.  Clear polish and Chapstick only. 

I wish I could still browse through Grandma’s closet.  My wardrobe just doesn’t have her panache.  Best to stick with the classics, navy blue skirt and sweater.  Crisp white blouse.  Perpetuity and all.  

It’s the playlist that’s worrisome.  Must have Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.  Perlman!  I can listen to that for years.  But eternity?  No, I'll want some variety, please!  I love my Lynyrd Skynyrd.  Throw in some Stevie RayVaughn for goodness sake.  Bonnie Raitt.  Black Keys.  Oh yeah.  That’ll work 

And yes, Grandma, of course - Amazing Grace.