Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Seenagers
Each generation gets a moniker. The latest it seems is the “seenager” generation. Seenagers can mean seniors who act like teenagers, but more and more it is being used for the young seniors. I’m not quite sure what age range qualifies as young when referring to seniors, but I’ve been told that it means seniors who feel they still haven’t crossed over to the senior group because of their approach to life. While being of retirement age, they don’t consider themselves seniors. Many are still working, while others make the most of their abilities, experience and time by reaching out to others in the community through volunteering or teaching. Some use their time to travel to far off countries, others go back to school to get a degree or to simply learn something new. The common denominator is that they keep active and involved.  
            A lady I know told me that for her it’s a great time of life. Unlike when she was a teenager, now she doesn’t need an ID to buy beer, she has no acne and isn’t worried about getting pregnant. And she added that she can take advantage of so many discounts available to her age group. Her involvement in the community is rather unique. From time to time she approaches the young people working the ticket booth in the movie theatre near her home and convinces them to ask a few “seenagers” seeking the senior discount that they need to provide ID. A lot of smiles follow as the movie goers proudly prove their age.
            The lady told me that it makes her so happy to see that those “seenagers” are invariably full of joy as they proceed inside the theatre. She is convinced that the good feeling lasts for some time. I’m tempted to agree. After all, who would not want to appear younger than their age? I certainly would. Unfortunately, no one has asked for my ID in a while!
           

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

The Ol’ Days
Women of my mother’s generation did not enjoy the household luxuries we take for granted today: the clothes dryer, the dishwasher, and so on. Homemakers made do with what they had, expending a lot of energy in their daily tasks. Luckily, little by little things improved.
            Few people would want to go back to those labor-intensive ol’ days, yet most of us mourn some aspect of the past which we somehow feel would make our lives better today. Pangs of nostalgia seem to be most common when the cost of things is on the carpet. Someone will inevitably say: I remember paying less than 50 cents for a gallon of gas.
            Nostalgia has a way of being selective, though. We tend to forget what the minimum wage was in the ol’ days. We tend to glorify only the memories which seem to prove the argument of the moment. For example, we may complain about today’s ethics by comparing them to a time when concern for others was, we feel, the norm rather than the exception. However, we tend to forget that some of the attitudes of the past were grossly narrow-minded.
            In the ol’ days, society through its better-than-thou authority figures, often sat in judgement over those who were different, making their lives miserable if not a living hell. In the ol’ days, prices might have been cheaper, but when it comes to certain attitudes, we could very well call them the dark days. It is a time not everyone would wish to relive.
           Of course, it could be argued that faced with today’s terrorism threats the ol’ days look pretty good in comparison. That is if we don’t take into account all the atrocities of past wars.
           Would it not be great if we could experience a world where man’s inhumanity to man would simply vanish?

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Living Today
The evolution of technology we are experiencing has been unmatched in the history of mankind. And change continues to snowball ever so rapidly.
         In the 60s, everyone had a theory of what the home of the future would be like. It was predicted that by the new century, robots would be washing floors and preparing meals. It didn’t happen quite that way. The tiles on the kitchen floor may be easier to clean today than the floor coverings in our grandmothers’ days, but the robots are nowhere in sight. The shelves in our grocery stores may be chock-full of products not available to our parents, but we still have to shop and prepare meals.
            In fact, when we look at it closely, despite the numerous improvements that have come our way over the years, home life is still very much the same. Meals may be faster to prepare with the microwave oven and we may have an array of entertainment choices, but we basically live in the same type of home environment our grandparents experienced.
            It seems to me that some of the more important innovations that have come along are serving us mostly unseen. We spend less time waiting in line at the grocery store check-out counter because bar coded prices are scanned quickly. We can now access our bank accounts any time of the day or night, and we can’t imagine that we actually lived in an era, just a few years ago in fact, when we had to make sure we got to our bank branch before it closed.
           I wonder if Alexander Graham Bell had any idea of the impact his newfangled contraption would have on the world. Did he ever imagine today’s smart phones?
            We used to write letters by hand, while today we can send an e-mail that will be read instantly halfway around the world. Yet much of the information technology at our disposal is basically just coming into its own, and most of us somehow managed to have very productive lives without it.
            We will be spending our retirement years enjoying the benefits of the very latest advances, but what amazes me is that, for the most part, we still worry about the same sort of things our parents and grandparents worried about. Like them we worry about our children and our grandchildren.
            In the end, like our parents, we can only hope and pray that the future with all the innovations it has yet to offer the world will be generous when it comes to happiness. In a world in constant and often mind-boggling evolution, it is after all the only measure that really matters for those we love.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Zombie Walking
It’s 2016. If you’re like me, you’re certainly wondering how we got here so fast. When I was young, the year 2000 seemed so far away, yet here we are 16 years into a new century. Proof positive that time does not stand still.
            And before we were boomers, all the new innovations we see today were definitely not on our radar. But we’ve adapted as each new gadget has come along and we are now enjoying unprecedented means of communication. But like in all other past eras, problems never before contemplated have entered our lives.
            Today, because people of all ages are consumed by the little screens on the devices they carry at all times, many are zombies walking. The term is now used to describe how little attention some people pay to the world around them when using their portable devices. In fact, so little attention that police everywhere are appalled at the types of accidents and fatalities they never saw in the past.
            Modern zombies walk down the sidewalk and even cross the street glued to their screens seemingly unaware that others exist. The number of accidents they cause is increasing at an alarming rate. In California, a man was so absorbed in trying to take the perfect picture with his phone that he fell off a cliff and died. And there are also zombies driving. Last week I saw a middle-aged man driving down my street while texting and drinking coffee. I have no idea how anyone can do such a thing since in my world giving all my attention to driving is a must. As far as I am concerned, texting while driving is as dangerous as driving under the influence, or perhaps even more so.
            And now we face another problem: the increasing number of accidents caused by out-of-control drones. Something needs to be done as far as laws are concerned so everyone can be safe. I mean, as people play with their personal drones in fields and parks some have hit the windshields of cars in motion. I can’t imagine how I would react if that happened to me. Drones are responsible for countless injuries, broken windows and other mishaps.
            How can we stay safe while the number of personal drones and of those from businesses keeps increasing? We all must speak up and let our legislators know that we want some action to keep our families and ourselves safe. Otherwise many of us might pay a high price because of our silence.