No matter how young I may feel, I'm frequently reminded that the years are piling up, so that what might seem to be a commonplace and obvious truth in my own experience is completely foreign to others. Just the simple fact that Ann and I read the newspaper every day seems to date us, but there are more unusual examples.
Earlier this summer I was mowing the grass in the backyard, and since it's such a postage stamp yard it was being cut by a reel-type mower that I pushed; no sense getting a loud, smelly and expensive power mower for that job. About half-way through the project I glanced out to the street and discovered I had an audience: four of the young-ish Hispanic guys who do the lawn maintenance for our neighborhood were watching, talking among themselves and pointing at me and my mower.
They had never seen such a thing. My knowledge of Spanish matched their knowledge of lawn mowers, so we couldn't communicate too well, but it was obvious that this was something new to them. I was astounded. I just thought everyone knew about reel (and "real") lawnmowers, but I chalked it up to another cultural difference between Anglos and Hispanics.
Nope, not a "cultural difference". A couple of days later I was reciting this experience with a neighbor, a college educated guy around 40 who, surprise, had never seen, let alone pushed, a reel mower. I felt like an anacronism.
That same feeling popped up last weekend. I was rehearsing for a wedding, and asked the couple to sign the necessary papers with my pen, not a felt tip nor a ball point, but my trusty Waterman. I might as well have handed them a quill pen; they had never seen such an instrument and had to be shown how the point must be aimed for the paper just so, and would have been even more astounded had they seen me drawing ink from my bottle of Scripto.
Examples abound: the funny looks I get when I give the milk carton a quick shake to get the cream off the top, that row of books called an "encyclopedia", a wrist watch that has to be wound every morning. I guess the reason I feel like an anacronism is that I are one.
posted by Bob/Dad/Granpa/etc. at 9:23 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Bob, Your blog was listed under "Blogs of Note" and "Timbktu Chronicles" just sounds to intreguing to resist peeking. Despite being 30 some-odd years younger, I DO know about the manual push mowers and beautiful, exquisite pens. Some people are just ignorant! Of course, computers were just becoming popular in the collage library my senior year, so I spent plenty of time at the copy machine so that I could take my research home (couldn't check out the law books.) Now my ignorance: attempting to upload music files to my blog!! You're not old; just classy!
What a great trip, Bob. Perhaps you are not an anachronisn but a real 21st century guy with the heart of a luddite. It's a bit of a surprise to realize that, within approximately 25 years, there won't be any of us left who remember life without television. And children don't learn to tell time by finding the number by the big hand and the one by the little hand, nor can they pick up the phone to tell the operator that they want to talk to their grandfather and be connected with him. I'm grateful to have lived in a quieter, gentler time. I am also grateful for the ATM machine and pay-by-touch at Harris Teeter. Virginia
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