The Womb and the Wave

I was born in the 20th century and spent at least 55 years there. I was young, enthusiastic and hopeful. By the end of the century I was at my peak professionally. My parents were alive and so was Mr. Baseball, Johnny Crown and Dan MacMurray. All five of them are gone now as well as many, many others.

If the twentieth century was my birthmother than I left claw marks on her uterus trying to stay where I was. The twenty first century was pushing but I resisted it for the first 22 years. Starting with Dubya and 9/11 the pushing was becoming increaingly urgent.

I didn't have a cell phone...didn't want one. I didn't wear a watch. Didn't need one. I had all the clocks that I needed and a wife to tell me what day it was if I needed a reminder.

I was living in my home town where I had spent my entire life. I had plenty of friends and was well regarded in my community. My computer skills were up to date. I could word process. I knew my way around photoshop. I loved my digital camera. I read books without a  Kindle. I went to the video shops every week; the library every other week. I listened to the Yankees on the radio or went to a Red Wings game at Red Wing/Silver/Stadium

Yeah, the weather was Rochester shitty, all gray and cloudy but I had become used to it. I could use the oppressive darkness as an excuse for my many moods. When I needed to get away, I had a cottage on Canandaigua Lake.

Change was on the horizon. I wasn't looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, yeah that light may have been a locomotive coming at me; at all of us. I became very aware of global warming and where the hell we'd be in 20 years. If the summers were gonna get hotter and the winters more Arctic, we could choose our poison. I preferred swelteriing and air conditioning to freezing and furnacing. You don't have to shovel humidity off the driveway.

Gradually, I began to social network. I got a kindle and started building my library. I got prostate cancer . After undergoing radiation and profound fatigue, I "recovered". The doctor advised us to head down South which we had been hankering to do anyways. We sold our share of the cottage, packed up our gear, sold our house and headed to North Carolina.

We had family near Charlotte who had made the move before us, so we wouldn't be strangers. When we got here, they helped us get settled.

I kept up with my Rochester friends on Facebook. I stashed my photos on Flickr. I'd gone about as far as I wanted to go with technology.

My exuberance had occasionally turned into exhaustion as we made our way through the first two decades of the twenty first century. Lynn does almost all of the driving. I concentrate on a 5 mile radius which is all I need. Within that five miles there's a hospital, a couple of grocery stores and my doctor's office.

Of course as a Boomer I could go on and on but I'm pretty sure that you've had enough setup by now and you get my drift. I remained anchored in the twentieth century until Christmas 2021.

Lynn bought me a cell phone for when we go the mall in case I get lost (or she loses me) which has happened already and I had to get a mall cop to find her.

8 months into it, I'm hooked on my phone. Can't figure out how I got along without it. 

Last week, she bought me an Apple watch which keeps track of everything that I do and has introduced me to my new favorite form of exercise; "standing around". Yup, the watch actually sets a goal for time standing along with everything else including how much time I take to wash my hands. Plus, I'm told that I can talk into the goddamned thing like Dick Tracy did in the comics or like Don Adams did with his shoe in Get Smart.

Yesterday, she bought me some new sneaks, black Nike airs with white trim which I can use on our treadmill. I've never used the treadmill before and had contempt for it. Why the hell would anybody run in place when there was a great big beautiful world outside ready to be appreciated. Well, the current heat wave prohibits walking around outdoors which leads to standing around indoors or sitting down watching teevee or lying down on the couch reading/resting my eyes.

Plus we just joined a brand new rec center which caters to"senior" citizens. I didn't want to hang around with old people until I came to the realization that I was twenty years older than the most junior seniors. We use the indoor track and last week I was one of only two men taking chair yoga along with 38 women, most of them previous blondes. I even went so far as to say "namaste" at the end of the class.

Lynn has been telling our daughter Mary about all the changes that I've been going through and Mary is thrilled that I'm "finally in the 21rst century.

So there we were last night; me in my new Nikes with my phone in my pocket and my watch on my wrist. We cooked up some meatless burgers on our Weber grill and poured a couple of light beers.

I put some dressing on the top of my burger and reached for the ketchup. The 21rst century ketchup containers are stored upside down to eliminate shake and anticipation. So here I am, all modern getting ready to put the ketchup on my burger.

I flip back the top and start squeezing. Nothing is coming out. I tried to non-chalantly put the ketchup back before Lynn noticed my hapless struggle. Too late.

"What's the problem"

"The ketchup won't come out"

"You've got to be kidding me. Let me see it."

I hand her the ketchup. She rolls her eyes and says, "watch this".

She screws off the top of the container which reveals a protective adhesive lid. She peeled off the lid. She squirted some ketchup on her burger. She looked at me as if I was moron from another century.

I offered the usual weak excuse.

"This is why I don't like these modern ketchup containers. Back in my day, it was a whole lot easier. The ketchup bottles were right side up. You turned them upside down and shook the bottle until the ketchup came out."

She was ready for that one.

"When's the last time that you opened a bottle OR container of ketchup"

I honestly couldn't remember. They always seemed to be open

"For the last fifty years they've had a lid on top of the ketchup to prevent sickos from contaminating the ketchup."

All of a sudden, with my watch and Nikes and phone and light beer and electric grill, I stepped back into the twentieth century before sickos started dropping poison into ketchup containers. 

What else could I do but laugh at my own anachronism, thankful for the twentieth century including some of the concerns that we have now that we didn't have then.

We had our meal and proceeded into the the twenty first century. 

We turned on our cable, streaming teevee and learned that the home of a former president had been raided by the FBI and that thirty years from now the current heat wave will feel like an oasis as heat and flood will make large portions of the earth uninhabitable and subsequent flooding will destroy Oregon and California. Al Gore wasn't talking allegory.

Let's hope we're all not looking at an approaching locomotive. In the meantime, let's enjoy the tunnel. Let's believe in magic. Let's hold onto hope.

You can't push the water back up the falls.

You can't get the ketchup back into the container.

We can't get back into the womb.