Tag Archives: babyboomer

Babyboom Boom!

Posted on February 21, 2014 | 4 comments

I was just looking at my page and saw that it’s been almost a month since I posted. I just don’t know where the time goes! Please introduce me to the people who say they are bored. I want to meet them to learn their secret. How do they have enough time in the day to get bored? Where do they get those extra minutes or hours? I had to have an MRI today and though it was louder than heck, it even went by fast.

I know I started a blog on how aging does strange tricks to the body. I’d looked in the mirror and although I recognized the person staring back at me, there were differences in her that I couldn’t account for. My ears are definitely bigger–maybe growing Dr. Spock-like even. So if the ears are bigger, shouldn’t you be able to hear better? Uh huh. No, no, no. As the ears grow, so does your hearing loss. Now, that is not all bad. No dripping faucet keeps me awake any longer. Clocking ticking? Who could tell?

Then there’s the hair issues. My own hair has never progressed much beyond the baby fine it was when I was two. Silky? Soft? Yeah, that’s right. And it leads to limp, lank, and wispy. Not lovely. I gunk it up as much as possible, even have treatments to stimulate growth. The result on top of my head is meager. Yet, as my hair thins on my head, it seems to be appearing on my face, and in my nose and ears! What the heck?

And I’m beginning to go down the memory lane where you can’t remember what you had for dinner the night before, but you remember your grandmother plucking a chicken sixty years ago.

Maybe that’s why I forgot to write this aging blog–I forgot it. Or maybe not.

The best benefit of getting older is by far: the grandchildren. As I always say, I finally understand what unconditional love is all about.

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Seeing Daylight, Saving ?

Posted on March 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

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Last night I wrote on my Facebook page; “I’m not ready for daylight savings time. It’s too early in March. The thought is adding to my depression. Leave nature alone.”
Now, it’s 5:16, the next afternoon and I have time to write this and then go outside to sit and read for an hour. Hey, I’m liking this daylight savings change.
Speaking of change, a couple of hours ago I told my husband I needed to change the clocks. He said, “Why? Just leave them like they are and you won’t have to change them back again.”

What’s scary is that for an hour, I thought this made sense. Then I wished I was a quick thinker and had said to him, “Seriously? We don’t change back for 8 months. I know time flies when you’re older, but that’s a huge chunk of a year, not chump change.”

As usual, my curiosity sent me to Wikipedia to learn more about daylight time. I learned: The modern idea of daylight saving was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson [] and it was first implemented during the First World War. Many countries have used it at various times since then. Although most of the United States used DST throughout the 1950s and 1960s, DST use expanded following the 1970s energy crisis and has generally remained in use in North America and Europe since that time.

So, that’s the facts. But what I really was reacting to last night was the feeling—the feeling that time is going too fast. I wanted to put the brakes on. I really wanted to put time in a savings account. Like I could.

 

 

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Teaching in the Sixties, One Regret

Posted on August 31, 2012 | 2 comments

I don’t really regret much in my life. I’ve always believed I had a strong moral compass that led me in the right direction. And I almost always try to do the right thing. But today, my confidence in the belief that I have known what the right thing is was shaken.

I was in my workout class doing crunches to the Marcels singing Blue Moon when I was hit with a hammer of regret. I remembered back to the late Sixties when I was Talent Show director at Meany Junior High in Seattle.

 

Meany Middle School location.

It was a crazy time period—rapid social change fueled by good intention and bad, resulting in a lot of chaos. Just doing a talent show was unusual. Some of the kids had gotten up acts lip-syncing to the music of that era.

“No,” I said. “Lip syncing is not a talent. You have to sing the song with your own voices. Then you can be in the talent show.”

What stupidity on my part! Now I know it would have been so beneficial for these kids to just have participated in a show. So what if they lip-synced (ask Madonna, etc.)? They would have had fun doing something positive in school.

But, oh, no! Judgmental little twenty-one-year-old me showed them the door. Was “True Art” so almighty important to me?

I don’t remember the acts that were in the show. I do remember that my husband came, and he was one of the only people to stand for the flag salute. And roving bands of kids overturned a lot of cars in the parking lot. (Ours was untouched so I don’t think it was a Lip-Sync Vendetta.) It was just that kind of era.

I was pretty rigid in my standards back then. Things were right or things were wrong—black or white. I hadn’t had the life experiences to know that there are many shades of gray having validity. I gained some of that insight in the next few years. By the time I left teaching at Meany, there weren’t talent shows anymore. Instead there were lock-downs and riots, and kids coming to class stoned. I was happy if I could get people to just put their name in the top left-hand corner of the paper. I was grateful that the Obey Tate decided to pull his gun on Mr. Wilson’s class instead of mine the next period. (Funny how you never forget some names.)

The Year Book.

I know I cared about my students, and believed in them. (except for the guy who scared me spit-less when he did show up. Usually he didn’t because he had taken over his brother’s job while he was in Vietnam. The brother was a pimp so Virgil worked all nighters and didn’t come to school much.) I know I wanted to teach my students how to read and write and speak. I felt these were tools to success for everyone. I still do. I know I encouraged people to think for themselves. I think I did a good job. But I do wish I’d let those kids lip-sync. My apologies to any of them reading this.

There’s a blue moon on August 31.

 

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Posted in About Life in General, Searching for Wisdom

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