When I tell my daughter adventure stories from my youth, she usually reaches a point,
less than a minute in, when she rolls her eyes, and this is
when things get most precarious-
because she thinks I am lying.
Because she says that 'not having a cell phone is inexcusable, how did you do it? The waiting, eye contact and
uncomfortable stuff...'
And against all odds, survival still happened before the opening of hotlines like
nine-one-one or Poison Control, before Alex rang his Graham Bells in our pockets replacing the change with a pal that pays,
before push notifications, before the weather was watched only on doppler before Amber sent out mass Alerts,
milk cartons were sold in paper boxes with pictures of missing innocence in the morning
white as milk, meant to scare children just escaping from the grips of the Boogie or Sand man and plunging them into
cold hormone infected milk product laced with lines of white sugar which in some places is also called White Death.
These things happened before towers tried looking like trees, before there were clear signals none saw, before we had never enough bars to keep us sated nor contained.
She reminds me she only ate Cheerios.
We both know it will never be the same as it never was before us, the way things change, technology-wise or foolish investors.
She tries to act old fashioned at times. She likes to listen to Frank Sinatra on a record player and sometimes she leaves her phone at home. This can cause mild anxiety.
And again, it was different when I was her age, but the same games were played.
Messages were left, comments had been made, he said, she said, she saw
that the blue lights were always on like on the webcams...
I told her of The Dark Ages when we had real darkness. It was an age sans filters or emoji's, pre-selfies.
Her eyes squinted, to her, it all sounded like, bar-bar-bar-3 bars for Barbarians. Parents. Sand? She spake. "What? Sand? I'm not following...that sounds scary."
"It was," I say. Just like today. "Sans. Sans means without."
"Like 'unfortunate'?"
Now all the answers ever given asked or not, right and wrong, left and long, short and sour,
are recorded for all time-sans quality assurance, fact-checking, intent, or meaning
and made most misinformation is easily available for preferential retrieval and re-use in part or as a whole however best adaptable to survival of the self-protecting species, such as us.
"That is why I don't pay attention to the news."
Facts are facts. CD-ROMS only last ten years. Paper books may make it to fifty. Photographs,
Paintings, Papyrus and the Pyramids are more permanent than entire populations and pixels. Now people may live shorter or longer than a lifespan, depending on what they build or mark they make.
She asks, "how long do clouds last?"
I say, in my limited perspective, as far as one can see,
maybe as long as a day,
but the cloud could come back-but never exactly the same-
hoping she won't recognize this resemblance to all other things and ages.
"You didn't check the weather-"
"I was trying the old method called, 'Leaving it up in the Air'."
"So you don't know? I'll look it up," she sighed.
"You're Googling."
"I smell rain."
Photo of Consuelo Vanderbilt taken 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
