Diff'rent Strokes

Roger Ebert's recent blog post (worth a read, by the way) about becoming an "old fart" in an ever-changing world has inspired me to be write about my own view of the changes I've seen happen, and how I've tried to adapt to them. Sometimes, adaptation has occurred without a moment's thought, and sometimes it has been a struggle. I'm still not sure what exactly precipitates one reaction vs. another.


Firstly, it should be stated that I grew-up middle class, and currently live a fairly modest middle-class existence. There were certainly a few years, after my parents' divorce and when I was living on my own, that I was living a working-class life, and I'm not one of those middle-class kids who deludes themselves into perpetually thinking that their lives are, always have been, and always will be, of the same financial status. Things can go up, and things can go down. But I mention the whole 'middle-class' situation as a statement on what sort of lifestyle I led growing up.

There was a time in our modest little home on Draper St. when the television consisted of the 'big three' networks: ABC, CBS and NBC, and PBS. Of those, I watched PBS the most, often wiling-away hours in my bedroom, my little 13" green-encased TV with the rabbit ears bringing me the joys of Victory Garden, This Old House, Julia Child and Doctor Who. When television was watched in the living room, it was normally whatever my parents fancied, which consisted of James Bond films on ABC, Columbo reruns, Murder, She Wrote and westerns. Eventually, we received cable, which in that day came in the form of a box that sat atop the television set, and you had to get up and movie the dial to whatever channel you wanted to watch. It went up to Channel 35. Oddly, while I enjoyed having more channels, the whole advent of cable didn't really phase me too much.

The first time I remember a sea-change occurring was when our household procured a VCR. The concept of it absolutely dumbfounded me. Everything I'd watch on TV had been by the schedule of the networks. Now we had this device that would allow us to purchase a hard copy of something, put it in, and watch it whenever we wanted. I could view The Transformers cartoon at my leisure! These places called video stores started popping-up like weeds. I remember our family frequented the one in Country Fair Mall and, later, the Stars & Stripes video store at the strip mall on the corner of Kirby & Mattis. I found these stores to be truly wondrous places. My parents and I rented and watched nearly the entire Alfred Hitchcock film collection which, to this day, still provides fond memories.

Things that we take for granted now, like computers and the internet, came along at various intervals in my life. It was a fact that my household was without a computer until the mid-1990s. Before that, I only had access to computers at school. There were special 'labs' for them, and we used Macs. I used to stay after school and do some fiction writing in those labs, as well play some games of Oregon Trails. Later, after high school, I'd trundle over to the Illini Lab on the University of Illinois campus and get my first taste of the internet. Still later, I got a hand-me-down laptop from my mom, which served as my first real computer/internet home experience.

The portability of music is something I still marvel at. As a kid, records and cassettes were the method du jour of consuming tunes. Kids in grade school were always envious of whomever had a walkman. I would wear-out my cassette tapes of Michael Jackson, Hall & Oates, and Sting. It took awhile for me to warm to compact discs, but eventually (in 1994) I purchased my first CD, a maxi-single for Moby's Feeling So Real, and was hooked. Eventually, Ashley & I discovered the joys of iTunes, and now most of our music is on the computer and on our phones.

I made the transition from VHS tapes to DVDs with ease, partly because I was working in the movie & music department at Circuit City during that time, and so was surrounded by the newest technology. I faced the transition to blu-ray with some hesitancy, but have now embraced that, too. E-reader devices are something which Ashley & I have, but I still grapple with, as I worry about the future accessibility of the books I 'purchase' on them. I use a Nook, and can't help but wonder what would happen to the books I've bought and read on it should Barnes & Noble suffer the same fate as Borders? But it does make more sense to use an e-reader: less trees are felled for the sake of pages, and reading is reading, whether it's on paper/ink, or a device/e-ink.

As for more socio-geographic shifts during my time, I've seen the rise and quasi-acceptance of gays & lesbians, transgenders, Hispanics, the first bi-racial President of the U.S., the proliferation of chain stores and restaurants, 24-hour services, 'green' initiatives, an increase in strident partisan politics, the re-unification of Germany, and the death of close family and even friends. Some of these are specific to my life, some of them are markers of everyone's lives. We all have our shared and unique experiences, to be sure. We all witness the world change around us. The question is: How do we handle it?

I feel as though I've handled most changes in a fairly decent fashion. Some stuff took longer to warm to than others, but for the most part I've done ok. It's true, there have been certain developments that I've disliked (even if I've partaken of them). 24-hour services fall into this category. I do not think the world needs to be anymore 'immediate.' In fact, I sometimes wish that things could slow down a bit. But then that's the crusty side of me talking. I realize this. For some, access to things 24/7 is a god send.

There may come a point when I can no longer adapt so well to change, and no longer have the desire to work harder to do so. I hope that day is far off. This isn't because all change is good. Indeed, some changes should be railed against. But for the most part, society advances in a positive manner, and to resist it, or become encrusted only in what we are comfortable with, is a sure way to become miserable with the world. And who really wants that?