Old Sees New

 When you, like me, have seen world war where soldiers actually bled and widows were made, a time when a radio was your entertainment and when you went to a Disney movie, it changed your life and the years you went to school where you had to sit down, shut up and listen with no smart-mouth back talk. Then when you graduated, no one gave you a job. You took the first one that came along and didn't ask too many questions. A time when you had to board with people and deny yourself just about everything until you had a few dollars together and could actually save money in the bank. The lovely day you met the man you married until one of you died and the days after when the world changed because a president in another country was shot and the threat of world annihilation was not a virus but a nasty big bomb that could affect everyone in an instant if it got in the wrong hands. That was my time and today I see governments that do care, that shell out money at astoundingly rates, where kids don't have pimples or big noses, get spanked even when they need it and everyone can go to the doctor and be fixed for free. What a world! And in it, there are scores of beautiful, smoothed-skinned and perfect bodied young men and women who don't HAVE to get married and whose weddings and houses after and children are also perfect and they all go on fantastic holidays and drive gorgeous cars and eat ideal food and go to parties and look like movie stars all the time. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I am not in a streaming film just out with digital everything including photoshopped bodies and perfect hair. If so, I am that frumpy old lady in a blur in the background. C'est moi. But what truly amazes me is how smart young people are. At least they appear to be. There is nothing they won't dive into with great confidence and courage even if they aren't sure they are ready for it. And they are nice about everything they do. They don't fight and argue and yell and they're good at avoiding the truth if there is a disagreement. They know how to cope with a crazy world, and when it gets too crazy, they launch out and take up protests and speak against it with obvious confidence and skill. No one is shy or backward about being forward. They all have very white, straight teeth and climb mountains and hike for miles and tone up in gyms for hours doing nothing that I can see, and dance their heads off to music that surely doesn't sound like music to me but they aren't listening anyway. Where nudity and sex and genders are whatever and wherever and no one is left out and everyone counts. The world has opened up, the lid is off and Pandora is no where in sight. Anything goes except ME, and ME is what matters most. There are softly spoken words in the heat of anger, gun shots whizzing overhead at fast food places and drug taking common and everything is shiny and new and nice and pretty and I am astounded but old and largely ignored, and that's okay with me because the daily news is way more interesting than fiction.