Generational Hits and Misses

Why do young people think that old people have nothing to do but sit around waiting for them to follow through on a promise? If I hadn’t been young once myself who was guilty of taking my parents for granted I would still be madder than a wet hen over something that happened this past weekend. I’ve never seen a wet hen but I have it on good authority that as idioms go this one makes no sense because chickens don’t mind being wet. And I suppose it makes no sense for me to be annoyed at being on the receiving end---rather than the giving end---of broken promises between generations but I was. “Mom, we just got too busy to stop by. I know, I should have called.”

Here’s what happened. Last July I mentioned to a relative of Don’s that I wanted to get rid of the bed frame and mattress set in my spare bedroom and turn the space into an art room. The mattresses while not new hadn’t been slept on more than a handful of nights---30 to be precise. She said her son (a guy in his forties) was looking to get a new bed for their daughter because she’d outgrown the single bed she was using. So the relative called her son and, yup, he wanted my mattress set. I was giving it away so I thought he’d come get it soon after the call. Nope. When that didn’t happen and as time went by I thought he’d changed his mind. For all I knew, his daughter pitched a fit about sleeping on something used. I wasn’t hearing anything from the mother or son.

Fast forward to this week when out of the blue I got a Facebook message from the guy that he’d like to pick up the mattresses and bed frame on Sunday and he would call Saturday to arrange a time. So I did my weekend shopping on Friday. Cleaned my house. Stripped down the bed and moved some things out of that room and into my bedroom to make it easier to get the mattresses out. I even went down the dreaded basement steps to clean up my painting easel that I was going to ask him to bring up while he was here. Saturday went by. No call. By 4:30 on Sunday still no call or Facebook message. I was the proverbial wet hen at that point in time and I visualized months going by before I’d hear anything again. So I started planning a passive aggressive act of revenge he’d never know about. It involved not giving him a collectible I knew he’d love. I’d sell it on eBay. Then he finally called, came over within twenty minutes and as he and his wife were leaving, I gave into my better self and presented him the family heirloom, cutting myself out of a $150 to $200 sale on eBay. Yup, I’m going to need to practice revengeful acts of passive aggressiveness because I clearly suck at it.

The lesson I learned from this saga is that until I became one, I really never understood how disruptive it was to tell an older person I’d stop by on a certain day, then not show up. Like many young people probably do, I assumed my folks would always be there sitting in front of the TV---no place to go, nothing else to do but wait for me to come brighten their day. Big sigh here. Sticking with the chicken idioms, I have to wipe the egg off my face and stop complaining. The universe is just setting things in balance. My Yin got Yanged.

Change of Topic: I got a new printer but I took one look at the nearly non-existence directions for setting it up and I decided to call in the geek guy to do it. I found a tutorial online that would have walked me through the process but I found a tutorial online to help me fix my old printer, too, and all I managed to do is give that one the final death blow. The guy, who was all decked out in black leather from head to toe, showed up on Monday. Not on time but since when do any service people show up when they’re scheduled so I didn’t get bent out of shape. This time he wasn’t wearing his vest of many pockets that I lusted after the last time he was here but that didn’t stop me from lusting after his computer skills. I think he specializes in helping grandparent types with their computer problems because, for a young guy, he sure knows how to communicate with people nearly three times his age. We covered everything from antiques to tattoos. We were talking about how computers are for his generation like cars were for my generation---a social hub of sorts---when he said something interesting. He said in my day we had to memorize and remember stuff and apply logic and that older people still problem solve that way while his generation just has to know how to look things up online. The bottom line---if he’s telling the truth---is he thinks older people are smarter than his generation because they are lost without their cellphones, Wi-Fi and the internet. True or not, it was nice to talk to a young person who genuinely seems to respect, appreciate and take an interest in his elders.  ©