Is It Just Me?

I haven’t even gotten my new smart phone in the mail yet and already I’m having fun with it. I’m planning the apps I want to download. I’d bet the farm you don’t know I can get pothole alerts for my county or that I can get my daily panda twins fix from the Atlanta Zoo. They have apps for that. Isn't that cool! Of course, I’m getting the normal downloads as well---CNN, Flashlight, Calendar, Maps, the local weather station and the grocery store apps, Kindle, Facebook, Barcode Reader and Instagram. My great niece is expecting a  baby in the spring and she will only post pictures on Instagram where, she says, others out in cyberspace can’t grab your photos, so I will have her to thank (or curse) if I get hooked on that app. Can you believe that over my lifetime we went from waiting 10-11 days for a letter or photograph to come from across the country to being able to get a message or photo in seconds? It makes you wonder what impact all this is having on young people just coming into the world. Will it give new meaning to the words, “he’s got a short fuse?” How is anyone going to learn patience in our modern age of easy communication and over-night or drone shipping?

I wrote my Christmas letter yesterday and now I need to reconstruct my mailing list in the new computer. When my old computer crashed a couple of months ago I upgraded from the Office Home Edition 2000 to Office Business Edition 2013 so I’m not looking forward to figuring out how to build my first mailing list, then merge it with labels. In a worst case scenario I can always hand write the addresses and make the Emily Posts of the world happy at the same time. Are there people left in the world who still care about proper etiquette? I’m told a lot of schools no longer teach cursive writing. Without their handheld devices and computers the kids of the future will be just as illiterate as the masses were in the 1700s. Even my nephew-in-laws say he can’t read cursive and he’s pushing forty. Someday the ability to read (and write) cursive handwriting will become a specialty skill only seen in professors at the highest institutes of learning as cursive writing goes the way of buggy whips and candle trimmers. Man that makes me feel old when I think about how much time we spent in grade school learning how to write between the two solid lines with the broken line in between.

Today I went to a program at the senior hall billed as Holiday Spirit and Fellowship and when I pulled up I found myself parked in between to a bright yellow Volkswagen and a clear green Escape. They made me wish I was driving a red car. You know how everyone seems to have a friend who can take the most benign statements and turn them into a sexual innuendo? Well, that’s me with colors. I see a green and yellow car parked alongside one another and I see two-thirds of a traffic signal. Ah, yes, I have several unmarketable quirks like that. One of which is spending entirely too much time wondering if all old people feel too young to be hanging out with people in our own peer group. Or it is just me? Why do we all have to look so gray and dated, so fragile? Who took the bounce out of our steps, the sparkle out of our eyes and left us singing Christmas Carols as the highlight of our week?

Everyone was ever so careful picking out their sugar laden, no caffeine treats during intermission. So demure and civilized---“Here, dear, take a napkin.” Except me, I was trying to figure out if our outside packages truly matches our personalities. Where was that woman who mooned people on a bus trip and the other glam gal who dresses like she belongs in old Hollywood? Where was that woman who waltzes into the room leading her husband on an invisible leash? I wanted see a red, green and yellow traffic signal, I wanted to see a crazy character hidden underneath a 20 year old Christmas sweater.  And when I took the time to look, they were all there...hiding in plain sight, waiting for just the right time to turn their red lights to green and let the good times roll. Sometimes we get so self-absorbed worrying about fitting in that we don’t see the seeable.

Is it just me? Heck, no!  Now, what was the question? ©