I am feeling so strange tonight. Everything started off okay. Had a really nice night at work, low stress. I even got out before midnight which is great in itself. I was all excited to get home and have a nice relaxing evening catching up on all my DVR'D episodes of Cheers...I love that show.
My first mistake was to immediately open my mail. All bills of course, but one just sent me over the edge. I received yet another gift from my bout with tendonitis...another hospital bill for my 20 minute surgery. I am not kidding, my doctor was in and out in 20 minutes. From the time that I checked in for out patient surgery till I was in the car home was about an hour and a half. You may ask why I am obsessing about the time factor. The reason is that including my latest bill, this 90 minutes of time has cost me $2200 bucks. I just can't believe that one measly cut and two shitty stitches can cost that much. They could have at least given me a manicure and a set of breast implants for that kind of money.
Oh well, movin' on. After I finished fuming about the state of our healthcare system I was ready to hunker down and fall into sitcoms. Instead I decided to watch a little Oprah because she was having a cast reunion from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was great to see all the old clips from the show and see the cast, especially Cloris Leachman...I love her and she still looks great.
All of a sudden it brought me back to the 70's and I became melancholy thinking about how the world has changed since then. I started thinking about how I felt about the world back then and how I feel about it now and I got really sad. I have become so cynical about life and our society. I know I was a kid back then and that most people become more cynical as they grow up but I do miss those simpler times.
I miss the days before pagers and cell phones and voicemail and email and having to be accountable at every second. As Ellen Degeneres once said "when being on the phone meant you were literally tied to your avocado colored wall phone by the cord".
I miss the days when trick or treating was the best night of the year. My parents weren't the most creative with costumes, so usually it was an old flannel shirt and soot from the fireplace. I was a bum many years and it was okay...still scored tons of candy. We would dress up, kiss our parents goodbye, grab our pillowcases and head out as soon as the sun went down. Then you would have to come home and unload at least twice. Nowadays so many kids have to trick or treat at the mall. It's just not the same as those innocent days when you could trust your neighbors.
I miss the dinner bell. I grew up in the Catskill mountains and lived on the top of a hill. Everyday after school we had that precious couple of hours to run and explore and play with all our friends on the hill. Video games were on the horizon but not there yet. Besides, there was nothing better than sledding from the top of our backyard all the way down to the bottom of the hill. I have no idea how none of us ever broke a bone with the speeds we would go. Then we would make the long walk to the top where along the way Mrs. P would always have hot cocoa waiting for us. Then you would hear the dinner bell and haul ass home because you knew it was time to eat.
I miss my Dad. He was an amazing person and there is huge void in my life without him.
I miss my mother the way she was before the sadness of losing Dad. We get glimpses of her former self here and there but overall I think she is just going through the motions. The world holds little joy for her. We will keep working on her though, she still has a lotta life left and I see her being a great old grumpy broad. She justs needs more time.
I think I just miss the happy, relatively safe world I grew up in. The one before greed took over. The one before school shootings and violence everywhere. The one before reality tv and girls gone wild videos.
Thank you all for putting up with this verbal catharsis. Like I said, I am just feeling strange tonight. Next blog, I promise I will tell a joke.
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3 comments:
Oh baby, I know what you mean, about missing those kinder, gentler, simpler times. But were they really that way? They were for us because we were kids, but it was the Cold War period too. There were race riots and lynchings; mass murderers and terrorists even then - we were just kids and oblivious to it. I bet kids today aren't any more aware than we were - and you KNOW how I (and your mother!) feel about the plugged-in thing - all those parents are going pay in spades for their negligence, regardless of their denials to the contrary.
I understand now why my father won't look back - there are too many ghosts. And I get bogged down too, sometimes, missing the way things were. But Time moves on, with or without us, and I think that what we put back into this world determines the quality of the way life can be.
I love that your dad used to go and read to the little kids every week - he didn't have to, but he did and they loved him for it - an entire group of kids he wasn't related to who got to experience having a grandfather read to them. That's what I'm talking about. As much as it sucks out loud that he's gone, he did great things with his time here, and that is a life lesson we can all take a page from.
Mrs. P and her incredible carrot cake (never had the cocoa, see)will always have a place in both of our hearts - and I've never even met her!!
Now, never, EVER watch Oprah or open bills at night again! Capiche?
I suppose we_be_toys is right in that the times we grew up in were no better than now. Im sure our parents were looking back thinking how sad it is that now there is too much t.v, too many parents divorcing, our childhood was much more simple. I think each generation is fated to have these thoughts as they (we) move out of young adulthood and into middle age.
What we miss is the innocense of our childhood. And in time, the kids we pitty today, will look back on their childhood and pitty the next set of kids.
I guess what Im trying to say is it all runs in cycles.
...well they pretty much said it all! I can only add that the great thing about a blog is that it can be a place to just unload...no jokes necessary. (Though NO one tells a joke as well as you do!)
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