When I was growing up, in the 1950s-60s, my mother would periodically say, “Why is it that when a good product that does what it’s supposed to do, for a reasonable price, comes along it doesn’t last? As soon as you find it, they take it off the market?”
Note that undefined “they.” I also heard my grandparents using the term “they” to refer to the unknown process whereby our simple needs were not met. Or, more likely, our needs were *no longer* met. It always seemed to be a never fully articulated assertion of, “We used to get what we needed, but ‘they’ put a stop to that. Now we have to make do with whatever we can get.”
Maybe I even heard my great-grandmother allude to “they.” I don’t remember, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone could produce video of a dim, distant family gathering wherein she spoke of “they.”
I don’t know how far back in history goes the concept of some unnamed, but powerful, cabal stepping on the needs and desires of the common man. But, I suspect it extends back to some forgotten pre-iPod time when an ape-like human ancestor said…grunted…signed, “Well, the ones who walk upright stole all the bananas again last night.”
When I was a child I interpreted this apparent nostalgia for the golden olden days to be nothing more reality based than the senile, delusional ramblings of old farts in their 20s. Or worse, the mad ravings of those who’d lost their mental moorings so long ago that they had no concept of “modern life,” you know, people in their 40’s.
As for those wonders of modern science, the ancient ones, I knew little. I was always afraid to get too close to my great-grandmother for fear I’d break her, She was so sweet and soft-spoken, so small and doll-like. And old? Lordy, I reckon! She was probably a few years older than I am now! I’d seen those horror movies where ancient people crumbled to dust when you touched them. Ewww. I shuddered to think what my parents would have done to me if I’d accidentally bumped into an ancient one and it crumbled into dust!
Then, when I was 12-13, it happened to me. My brother, almost three years younger than I, and I were sitting in the car waiting for my mom to come out of the grocery store. She’d told us we could each have a candy bar, if we were good. I wanted a Cherry Mash and I forget what my brother wanted.
Well, we were “good” and my mom smilingly handed us our candy. I got miffed because, instead of getting me a full sized Cherry Mash, she’d gotten me some sort of miniature Cherry Mash, which I hadn’t even been aware “they” made.
After much wrangling, I was convinced that this was, indeed, a regular sized Cherry Mash. Except, of course, it wasn’t. It was a smaller version. Even my brother agreed with that. After we got that sorted out, my mom started to explain why the candy was smaller than it had been a few weeks earlier.
My god, I nearly had a heart attack. Was I hearing correctly? THIS was what I’d heard for so many years? THIS was what “they” had done to a million other things? THIS was what the oldies were always complaining about? THIS could happen to ME???
Several years later, I was taking my brother to school and we stopped for our breakfast, Dr Peppers, at the convenience store. I gave him a quarter and a nickel, and he came back with ONE Dr Pepper which, being a little brother, he had already begun drinking. Besides being steamed that I was going to have to go without breakfast, all I could think was, “Has the world gone mad? One, instead of two, Dr Peppers for a quarter? Where would something this heinous end?”
You know, I’ve read a zillion “coming of age” books and stories. It’s always something really poignant, like apartheid, or AIDS, or deforestation, that sends our hero/heroine stumbling across the fuzzy, but razor-sharp, line between childhood and sadder-but-wiser adulthood.
For me it was the price of Dr Peppers. And I was, from that moment forward, forever on the side of those whose mouths turn up in the sneer of, “They screwed us again.”
It’s odd the things that can radicalize a human being, and in the time it takes a heart to beat only once. I never again believed the Vietnam war was anything but a screw job. School was a screw job. Paying women less than men was a screw job. My mother convincing me to take clerical courses, even though I was going to college, was a screw job. Although, I finally saw that she’d been right about the laundry charging more for my shirts than they charged for my father’s, larger, shirts. What a screw job.
The world was a veritable minefield of screw jobs. And it was up to me to fix that. Because, although everyone else saw the screw jobs, most just passively accepted them as the price of living on planet earth.
Well, it’s been a difficult forty years since the “Day of the Dr Peppers.” I’ve popped a few blood vessels along the way. I’ve made some enemies. I’ve alienated some friends, acquaintances and relatives, and I’ve cried several oceans full of tears of rage.
But, I’m still standing. I’m still mad as hell, and I still don’t suffer fools gladly. I still won’t shut up, although I’ve developed methods so sly and wily that I’m sometimes mistaken for a “reasonable” person. Ahem, I believe that’s called the wisdom that comes with age. Hey, whatever works.
Here’s what I’ve noticed in the last few years–maybe about ten years. There’s a new generation of young people out there who, it seems to me, were born knowing that “they” are taking away what was once good, and substituting dreck.
Yeah, this generation didn’t get such great educations, that’s one of the things that’s been taken away, a good education. They didn’t get much in the way of nutritious food and healthy medical care, those are long gone. And, yeah, some do buy into the corporate bread and circuses of “social networking” and tech toys.
But, I hear them everywhere, they’re coming in loud and clear. They’re mad as hell, long before “they” expected them to be. And I really believe that, unlike my generation, it isn’t going to take them 30 to 40 years to figure out that they are being screwed with manipulation and distractions.
All the contrived social ills that the elite of this world has thrown at them, from disease and poverty to broken families and crack babies, from unaffordable housing and 24/7 surveillance to endless wars and fascistic nation states, cannot stop them the way “they” stopped previous generations. Why? I suspect that in some way I can see, but don’t understand, this generation was just born smarter and stronger. And none of the BS that’s been thrown at them, since birth, can change who and what they are.
Now, I really won’t dissolve into a cloud of dust if you bump into me. But neither am I going to live long enough to watch this new generation “fix it.” But they will fix it. I promise, I predict, I prophesy, I see clearly, these are the people who will get it right. These are the people we thought we were.
August 2, 2008
