Listen, my ancients, and you shall hear of modern developments quite queer: the peculiar habits of everyone raised, as or by Baby Boomers, and you’ll be amazed.
Here’s one: They all wear the same kind of pants, made out of the blue stuff that we used to fancy for working on farms and cleaning latrines; they wear them for everything and call them all “jeans.”
Your class had some beauties, say seven or eight. The rest of the girls dreamed of blooming late. Every teen girl’s a knockout now, thanks to the fake-up of contacts, not eating, and fabulous make-up.
Yes, you had equivalents to cool handsome dudes, but “bad boys” did not always appeal to girls’ moods. And though you’d be one who’d remember quite fully, you simply cannot recall one single bully.
Back in the day if you needed a drink of water you simply would go to the sink. But now this dehydrated generation drinks water by bottles for lubrication.
Where once you found radios super high tech, today’s average kid has Ipod round her neck. Where you once wasted time finding telephone booths, all teenagers now have their personal Bluetooths.
When they go off to college, just like you before, they tend to leave parents home minding the store. But when these kids party and drink and carouse, their billpayers (unlike yours) don’t say “straighten up — or else!”
In your day, the coeds all came back by 10 p.m. and their dorms did not include men. Now enlightenment rules that all genders may roam everywhere through the night, and not even come home.
Your whole student body ate in the dining room: one meat, veggie, starch — there was simply no whining room. But now there’s unlimited choice for each teen of Epicurean food and gourmet cuisine.
New dorms have their suites and luxurious quarters, private bathrooms, computer setups and porters. For all of these reasons, and so many more — no wonder the cost of it’s gone through the floor.
Religion in your time was part of the fixture, but it’s often gone now from the modern day picture. You sang in the choir, and you learned to love Bach and never in your darkest times predicted rock.
Today there is music that rants and raves, in multiple pitches and numerous staves. But mostly it screams and it shouts and it whacks away at all customs (except of course, sex.)
Mention their morals and here too there’s difference in action and attitude and surely good sense about doing certain things with the greatest avidity, and calling it freedom instead of stupidity.
But times are a-changing — the picture’s not pretty: Your thoughts turn from wonderment into pity. For years you’d watch graduates as they raked in the dollars, but now there are smudges on all those white collars.
Till lately they’d buy homes as big as a box so huge that they’d rattle inside there like rocks. These days you must feel for their sudden affright as mortgages limp away, lost in the night.
They still fly in airplanes the size of a house, but all can be brought down by birds or a mouse. Their summers are hotter, their winters a mess, they’re living much longer but enjoying it less.
You try not to go the “I told you so” route. You sympathize, offer assistance to boot, and, you know, it is true that life’s always been tough. We’ve all lived and we’ve learned. But not fast enough.
Now Easter’s a good time to clear up the weather. The important fact is, we’re all in this together.
Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears on alternate Sundays in the Times-News.
Maude McDaniel - Living
On returning to college (for a 58th reunion)
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History of chopsticks and related subjects
Now there are some big questions in life, like where did we come from, and even bigger questions in life, like where are we going? Today, however, I prefer to talk about chopsticks.
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Wondering? Here’s how cards began
Just in the last few years, I have become quite the cardplayer .My father would be amazed, because he would not allow me or my brothers to play cards (with the regular cardfaces) when we were growing up. We were, however, allowed to play other games that had cards of their own, like Touring and Flinch.
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By now, we should know all the answers
Here I had expected that, by the time I reached this advanced age, I would know all the answers there were to know, or maybe even more. But apparently it was not to be, for, lo and behold, I seem to have still more questions lining up, like all those thousands of blackbirds on the lines in front of the M&T Bank on Industrial Boulevard.
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Here are a few laughs to start the new year
Nothing’s better to start out a new year with than jokes! Even if they are other people’s jokes. And some of these are not so much laugh out loud, as just wry observations on the world. But then that’s what the best humor is often about!
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Many happy holiday returns — or remains
There are a lot of things in this world one wouldn’t mind living over again. You know, the standard stuff, the day you got your absolute favorite Christmas gift.
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Hobbies are often other people’s ideas
Sometimes collections just happen.Those are the ones that owe their existence to the kindness of others.
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An admiring ode to the wonders of dirt
Let us all praise — dirt.Yes, that’s what I said, dirt.
The most common stuff in the world, right?
What we wash off ourselves, morning and night. Over and over again. What whole companies make huge profits getting rid of.
I want you to praise dirt? -
The older she gets, the less tolerant she is
You probably haven’t noticed this, but I seem to be getting less tolerant with age. Sort of like the mellowing of fine wine, but in the other direction.
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By these standards, they were everything
Back in the day, as we were preparing for a golf tournament at Maplehurst, a fellow on my team observed, “Whaddya know. I’m playing with three columnists: Jack Anderson, Jim Bishop and Jim Goldsworthy.”
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Idea of man caves resurrects memories
One of the things that annoy me most about one of my favorite TV shows (House Hunters), is not just the irrational need to “upgrade” everything in sight, though that really is pretty awful. Here are these kids, often in their early 20s, who think their first house should have everything from the start.
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History of chopsticks and related subjects
