Commiserating Tales of Woe, Two Old Friends

[DonnaFlood]

This page seems to fit in with the conversation a friend and I had over a cup of tea.
“Do you remember living in the country when we were kids?” He asked.

“Who can forget!” I laughed out loud. And from there we rambled on about all the
things for what our kids call us crazy. And we went on from there.

“My kids think I’m nuts because I like to sit on the porch and listen to the birds sing!”

“Well, my kids think I’m crazy because I love to clean house and have people over, instead
of sitting around watching t.v.!” I wasn’t about to be outdone.

“After I’ve found a prize collectors piece of glass and brought it home to display, they
ask, “Why!” He almost moaned.

“Have you noticed how they look at you like you have two heads,” if you cry because they
are getting a divorce? MY point was made.

“Yeah! Or when you turn them down for baby-sitting?” He had the floor now and I let him ramble on about that.

Oh well, so goes the commiserating tales of woe between two old friends who were once
young and probably discussed in the same way by our parents.

The conversation some how seemed to tie in with this video which is a far cry from when
we, indeed, did live in the country.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/02/15...ass-overlords/

[miolchu]

Re: Commiserating Tales of Woe, Two Old Friends

My maternal grandfather hitched rides in horse drawn wagons as a boy. He then spent 50 years working on steam powered trains, making the transition to diesel-electric before he retired. When he was a boy, powered flight was a dream. We sent men to the moon several times and started building shuttles before he died. The changes he saw in his lifetime would be the stuff of a historic novel. His children and grandchildren took much of this in stride with little thought because change was happening daily and was familiar. Yet the effect on my grandfather was subtle. He never owned an automobile in 85 years of life, preferring to walk if he did not have a ride. Your video of the corning future has much of the same atmosphere.

[FriedaKateM]

Re: Commiserating Tales of Woe, Two Old Friends

Watching a video like that gives me such mixed feelings!! My maternal grand-dad came from England with my grandmother, for purpose of working in the early airplane industry. In 1909, he & others, with employer, attempted to win the Curtiss prize flying a hydroaeroplane up the Schuylkill river near Philadelphia. He then went on to Dayton, Ohio, working in airplanes again, about where the National USAF Museum is today. I was a teen when Sputnik flew over, but I also had many hands-on experiences with my brothers & parents, like going fishing, camping and so on. This is my opinion, in thinking of my own kids, that my grandkids do not know how to actually entertain themselves, but tend to require the DSL thingys, iPads, etc., etc. My brothers & I would go "trash picking" up & down the alleys near our house, & play hide & seek all over the neighborhood, running through other people's yards. We'd wait for the ice-man to come with the big block of ice on his shoulder, & after he went back to his open-bed truck, all of us kids would jump onto the back, to get a splinter of ice to suck, & jump off before he turned the corner. I still live a "hands-on" kind of life, but that video seems to me to be a picture of more separateness in families in the future. The screen on the wall reminded me of the movie FAHRENHEIT 451, that I saw years ago. My own dad used to ride in a wagon type of bus, with a potato sandwich to go to school. Here I am, and actually this future sort of scares me. Joan