The words, they are a'changin'

Our words change with our times. My church friend and her daughter told a story today of their recent experience in a drug store:

Customer (to a young woman who is a checker at the drug store): I'd like to buy a telephone. Can you tell me where to get one?
Checker: I don't know what that is. Ask the guy on  the floor. I'm sure he can help you.

Customer (to the guy on the floor, another young one): Excuse me, can you tell me where to find a telephone?
Worker: A what?
Customer : A telephone.
Worker: I don't know what that is.
Customer (holding her thumb to her ear and her pinkie to her mouth): You talk into a receiver like this, and someone talks back to you.
Worker: Oh, go down two aisles on your left.

This conversation reminds me of a conversation I heard in an elevator a few years ago. Two teenagers were talking, and I eavesdropped from the middle of their conversation:

Teenager #1: What's a record player?
Teenager #2: It's something about this big (she illustates the size of a breadbox with her hands.) Back in the day, people listened on records to music.
Teenager #2: (nods): What's a record?
Teenager #1: It's this plastic round disk that musicians recorded their music on. Sort of like CDs, only bigger.
Teenager #2 nods, and I get off of the elevator.

Then there was the first time that I felt significantly older than my high school students. Before class, they were quizzing each other for their American History test.
Student #1: Watergate.
Student 32: Some guys broke into a hotel room and stole some secrets.
I interrupt: "No! No! Watergate!" I open my eyes in surprise, and I gesture dramatically. "Watergate! It wasn't dull! It wasn't a history lesson! It was real life drama every night in front of the color t.v.!"
The students look patiently at me though I've interrupted their quiz. Sure that my outburst is over, Student #1 says, "Vietnam."

The words, like the times, they are a-changin'.

March 13, 1964

On the day I was born, Mom’s forty-five minute public bus ride to Grady Hospital in Atlanta must have been uncomfortable as she rode to give me birth. (She was nine months pregnant and thought she was having intestinal distress.)

I hear the hours of labor were no luxury cruise either. (Carol Burnett once compared giving birth to blowing a bowling ball out of a nostril.)

I was born on the thirteenth floor of Grady hospital’s White wing on Friday, March 13, 1964, so I have always considered thirteen my lucky number. For me, being born was lucky.
 My parents, because they were White, took the front entrance while African-Americans took a back entrance into the hospital. President Johnson signed “The Civil Rights Act of 1964” that June, and though racial integration comes slowly in the South, I’m pretty sure that little White babies and little Black babies can now lie in cribs next to one another. How strange the separation of the babies seems now.

I am the first child of two first children, so in my first years, my parents and I are a young family of type-A personalities: perfectionists, anxious about success, planners committed to a plan. We control our destinies. It is our responsibility to be good and to do good in the world.

When I was born, Dad was a 27 year-old pediatric intern in the Air Force, and Mom was 22 years old, an army nurse released from her duties because she was pregnant.

The first thing my dad said when he saw me was, "She's a beautiful girl. With a big nose." You will be relieved to know that I have grown into my nose over the last 47 years. In fact, now my nose is remarkably small.

Lots of other things have changed over the years, too. I'm taller and wider than I was then. I have a larger vocabulary. Though we didn't know it, I had a brain tumor then. I don't now.

Here's to this lucky life!

Mary

Junk eMail

My junk mail tells me that I am entering a new phase of life, a new age. Next month, (mark your calendars), on March 13, I will celebrate 48 years on this planet.

Somebody must have told the junk email gods that I am getting old. I get a lot of invitations from "Meet Senior Singles in your Area," and "Meet Christian Senior Singles." Though I do attend church, my church is awfully progressive, and I'm guessing I'm not really the Christian Singsles demographic.

For starters, I'm not a senior. Additionally, I'm not who "Christians" usually market to. Thanks to my cousin Lori, I once belonged to "Focus on the Family," but that was a long time ago, and I never renewed my subscription. Also, I'm not single. I have a partner, though since she's a she, maybe they don't count that.

I'm also getting email from Hospital Beds for Home, Motorized Wheelchairs, and the Walking Cane Store (well, I did order a cane from them.)

New on the list is the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). I can't even qualify for AARP until I'm 50 years old, and I won't qualify for retirment until I'm 65 years old. I think they're marketing a little early.

Maybe turning 48 years old is sort of like turning 17 years old, a wasteland of new priviledges. At sweet sixteen, I got my driver's licence. In my day, at 18 I could legally drink alcohol. At 17? I could go to an R rated movie, something I had been doing for years. Whoopee.

At 48, I get to...keep getting older. That's pretty good.