Generations
The losses this week of Patrick Mcgoohan (Secret Agent Man, The Prisoner), Ricardo Montalban (Khaaaaaaaaan!), and the painter Andrew Wyeth has put me in a reflective mood. I think of my two children, one is 14 and the other is 12, and I think of all the people and things that made impressions on me when I was growing up that they don’t know. (Stream of consciousness section) Rotary phones, long distance operators, Johnny Carson, Laugh-In, Colombo, Red Skelton, paper routes, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Richards, Apollo moon shots, LPs, typewriters, vacation slide shows, super 8 home movies, huge Sunday comic pages, and so much more.
I have successfully passed on some values. They like Python and my son likes the Stooges, as all red-blooded American males are duty bound to. (It’s hard to find them these days, however) My daughter loves to play music like my wife, and they both like to draw a lot. I do have to introduce them to the Marx Brothers and Laurel & Hardy still.
I know each generation has cultural touchstones that the next generation ignores or dismisses. I wonder what they will wax nostalgic about when they have kids. Ipods, cellphones, the Daily Show, Harry Potter, Facebook, Pirates of the Caribbean? (I am likely ignorant of most of it myself)
I know someday I’ll be talking to my grand kids “No, we didn’t have the computer interface port when I was a kid. We didn’t even have computers! If you think that’s weird, my grandparents didn’t have electricity when they were kids. Did I tell you about when I was a boy and we landed on the moon?” And my children will understand why people start to talk about the old days after they have kids.
My mind was going on that path for the same reasons. We were discussing how the old Bugs Bunny cartoons are what we watched as kids and how we only got cartoons on Saturdays. (BTW, I have been introducing my children to some of the oldies, too. My children are fans of Marx Brox. and Abbot and Costello, but they won’t quite sit still for Laurel and Hardy yet.)
How could I forget Bugs? Also the days of only 5 or 6 TV stations.
Great post! I marvel at how different things are now from when I was my 20 year old son’s age. Some things overlap: rock music, 70’s bell bottoms, now “boot leg” jeans, what were once called hip huggers, are now called the “peace rise” waist…..but then I look at how I waited for the mailman every day while in college to hear from my family. Oh, of course we had phones in those days, but even the ring tone is like remembering ancient history – and forget about call-waiting! Busy signals – a thing of the distant past? Today I can log onto AIM and see if my son’s there, ‘communicating’ in real time.
I like to pride myself on knowing most of this stuff despite only being 17 (I have not failed to recognize a single thing mentioned so far). Personally, I find it a lot better than most of the stuff we have today, which makes me sad, but we have our own things (I personally like to wax nostalgic about Power Rangers and Pokemon…).
Not everything from back then was better. I’ll take a laptop and the internet any day over encyclopedias and remote terminals. (and spell check, otherwise I’d never have spelled “encyclopedias”)