Into the Future

Some of us remember a time, perhaps in the 1960s when the 21^st century was looked upon as the ultimate utopia.

We were told we would have refrigerators with computers in the door where we could check off grocery items as they ran out (rather than having to do something as old-fashioned as write a list!), and when we had enough items on the list, send it to the local grocery and our groceries would be delivered to our doors.

We were assured we would have robot maids, like Rosie from The Jetsons.

We would have flying cars.

We would have wrist watches that would allow us to make phone calls, as Dick Tracy could do.

Doctors would wave salt shaker-looking gadgets over us to get a comprehensive diagnosis of our well-being, just like Bones did on Star Trek.

And perhaps we would be able to beam from place to place from a transporter room rather than using planes.

We would have the option of living on Mars or a space station, and perhaps vacation on the moon.

There would be so much gadgetry to make our lives easier, it was almost inconceivable.     

Ah yes. The future.

In reality, there were computers – PCs and laptops, something they never predicted – and cell phones.

Yes, the fridge did catch up to the computer age. There are apps on our cell phones that allow us to order our groceries – and even our fast food – and have them delivered. We can even order almost anything from Amazon and have it delivered within a day.

Thankfully – especially living in New Jersey, where the driving is horrible and turn signals are optional – there are no flying cars. Indeed, people’s drones are bad enough.

We do have wrist watch phones, but they still need to be synced with cell phones.

Medicine hasn’t quite caught up with Star Trek – nor has travel – but there are big machines to do those diagnostics, and I’m sure one day they’ll be the size of salt shakers.

We also haven’t got our robot maids, for which I’m dreadfully disappointed. The closest we’ve come is the Rumba.

Vacations are still earth-bound.

But our advances haven’t been without drawbacks.

Remember Y2K?

And while nearly everyone has a laptop or tablet, and every child seems to have a phone, they haven’t made life easier, and they certainly haven’t made us a more civilized society.

It hasn’t made us freer. People are enslaved by their phones. They can’t tear their eyes from them. Walk down any street, and you’ll find pedestrians with eyes glued to the screen.

Try having a conversation with someone who is physically standing next to you. Even loved ones usually lose in competition with an incoming text.

And while some talk, most don’t want to talk to others. They prefer texting.

People call one another hoping no one will answer. Leave a message at the tone. Better yet, text.

Children don’t go outside to play. Good heavens, it might be too hot or too cold. Heat index and wind chill determine whether or not there is outdoor recess in schools. And the poor dears might not have hats and gloves. When I was in school, it was considered the parent’s responsibility to make sure a child had those things, and the child’s responsibility to wear them.

Besides, children would rather stay inside and “play” on their computers or phones, where their playmates are in cyberspace, not in the same room.

Adults “friend” people online, while actual friendships often languish in preference to the electronic.

And the negative result of all of these “futuristic” advances is that we have lost contact with being human – or at least being civilized.

You can be anyone online. No one need know your true identity. While many people are the same online as off, the anonymity of the internet has given people license to be horrific excuses for human beings.

If someone disagrees with your opinion online, rather than having a conversation to further understanding, or at least explain why you feel as you do, there is more likely to be an attack of insults. Snowflake seems to be the insult of choice. If you’re conservative, the worst you can say of someone is that they’re a liberal snowflake.

It doesn’t matter whether the person is a liberal, conservative, moderate or being from mars. If they disagree with the other person’s opinion, they are the enemy.

We have become such a rude, bullying society since the advent of the internet that tolerance has gone out the window. This bullying rudeness has, with the blessing of a variety of politicians, bled over into actual interactions in the real world.

Yes, this is a sweeping generalization not true of everyone in the world. There are decent, civilized people in the world. But they’re being drowned out by those who are incapable of admitting – or even realizing – there are valid opinions on the other side.

There is a feeling of anger and rudeness about the world that I don’t remember growing up. We had fears of an enemy, but it wasn’t your next door neighbor. It was the leaders of another country: The Nazis, the Communists.

We didn’t walk around with a chip on our shoulders, waiting for the person standing next to us to say the wrong thing so we could start an argument.

And we certainly didn’t live in fear of going places because we might not come home alive.

Don’t believe me?

When was the last time you thought better of beeping your horn at someone who sat at a green light because they might turn around and shoot you?

When was the last time you decided to order online rather than going to the mall because of a recent spate of shootings at malls?

Have you stopped attending religious services because of shootings in churches, synagogues and mosques?

Perhaps that hasn’t come home to roost where you are. Or perhaps you’re one of the ones who concealed carries “just to be safe.”

I have more than once swerved on a highway rather than beeping at someone who’s crossed the dotted lines because I didn’t know if they might be an angry person with a gun.

Maybe my reactions have more to do with the fact that I work in schools.

One day there was a threat by a student in one of those schools. He planned to shoot up people in the school. While they assured us he wasn’t in school that day, and there was significant police presence in the school, I had my car keys with me at all times, and knew the closest door to the outside everywhere I went. If there was a lockdown and the opportunity presented itself, I was going to run, not cower in a fetal position in the back of a classroom.

Maybe it’s the little things like that that keep me angry just below the surface.

I’m impatient with other drivers because I’m trying to get home, get to my safe place, before anyone can hurt me.

It’s a hell of a way to live.

Maybe that’s why I’m so anxious to retire. Maybe that’s why I’d prefer to live in another country – one without guns.

The Trouble with Change

Change is hard. Sometimes remaining the same is harder.

People tend to use things like the new year or a new month – or even Monday – to make a change, be it start a diet, an exercise program, be a nicer person, or whatever. Usually they bite off more than they can chew – losing weight, quitting smoking and starting Alcoholics Anonymous, for example – all at once.

Often, the goal is something vague, like getting into shape. Come on, round is a shape!

But what does getting into shape mean? Is there a weight number attached, a clothing size, a number of bench presses?

And why do we humans tend to want to start at the beginning of a year, which is usually when resolutions are put into place?

New Year’s Day, people, is a holiday in most places. That means the intention is usually pushed off until the second.

New Year’s Day is for sleeping in, not exercising. It’s for getting over the hangover for some. It’s a stay in your jammies and fuzzy bunny slippers kind of day. And besides, there are probably still potato chips and dip left. It would be a waste to just throw that out, wouldn’t it?

I am, I admit, one of those people. Yes, I love my onion dip, even without the chips. I might let a few veggies hang around until they wilt, but let potato chips get stale? Never!

I have, for years, wanted to lose weight. I’ve even managed a bit of it at times, but I’ve never been back, even for a visit, to what I considered my best weight.

I get partway there, and something always happens to knock me off the good eating habits.

You would think, that having been bullied because of my weight as a child – my mother insisted I wasn’t fat I was just taller than my peers, which is why she bought me the next size up and hemmed the trousers – that I’d be more conscious of any weight gain.

My mother never bought me chubby sized clothes because I “wasn’t fat,” but she also never discouraged me from having cookies as a bed-time snack, or candy as an after-school snack.

My mother used to watch a half-hour TV program called, “Exercise with Gloria,” in which said hostess, in the 1960s version of exercise outfits would lead the way with sit-ups, toe-touches, side bends and other gym-class-type exercises (ladies did not use weights in those days!). My mother would encourage me to join her in these floor exercises when the show was on and I wasn’t in school. The fact that I could easily do all of the exercises simply proved to her that I was not overweight.

Still, my peers, in part urged on by not-so-well-meaning parents told me I couldn’t play on certain toys in their back yards because I weighed too much. It should be noted that I was a year or so older than most of the kids I played with because there were no girls my actual age closer than 4 or 5 blocks away, and I wasn’t allowed to play with the boys.

So, when I graduated from college and managed to lose weight and get into a program at the up-and-coming gym, I was suddenly able to wear the types of clothes I’d never fit into before.

Other things changed in my life, as well – like getting asked out, and actually having a boyfriend for more than one date, although never for as long as a year until I met my now-husband.

I managed to maintain what I considered a decent weight – my mother thought I was too thin, but the weight/height guides had me pretty much where I should be – for about 10 years, despite my mother’s attempts to sabotage my weight maintenance whenever she could.

Then I turned 32, a stressful time in my life, when I returned to university to get a degree that would actually allow me to have a decently-paying job. I tried valiantly to study and keep up my exercise program, eating as I had been doing since the weight loss at 22.

But my weight climbed, for no reason I – or my doctor – could find, despite my best efforts. I gained 30 pounds in about 6 months despite anything I tried to keep it from happening.

It’s been an uphill battle ever since, to not only lose weight, but also to keep weight from going ever higher. It’s been a battle I’ve lost many times.

I was the thinnest bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding in my twenties. By my own wedding at the end of my 30s, I was a pudge.

Still, I soldier on, each new year determined that this will be the year.

But New Year’s Day, as I’ve said, is left-over chips and dip day. One more for Old Lang Syne. And January second is a dismal failure, even if it occurs on a Monday.

But hey, whoever said you couldn’t start something on, say, Wednesday? In February.

Lent. Yes, there’s the ticket. A time of sacrifice. Sacrifice those chips and dip. Six weeks, at the end of which is usually my birthday. Let’s see. Two pounds a week times six. Twelve pounds. Goal set.

Sounds like a great plan.

I cannot tell you how many people must plot to undo my best laid plans.

There’s the person who shares my treatment room, who likes to also share whatever snacks are in the faculty lunch room. I tend to avoid the faculty lunch room because of those snacks.

Then there are the monthly – or more often – staff meetings of the OTs and PTs I work with. And people tend to bring a variety of junk food to those meetings to share.

I have asked, begged, that they not bring things like that to share. How about veggies or fruit? No.

If it’s fruit, it’s chocolate covered strawberries.  And what good are veggies without dip? Or I’m told that crackers and cheese are “healthy” snacks.

Sure, you’re thinking, Well, just don’t eat any of it.

Have I mentioned how much I like things like crackers and cheese?

I have tried. I’ve even tried bringing my own piece of fruit to eat.

And sometimes I get almost to the end of the meeting before someone passes me something, and well, just one little piece…

I’ve told people that bringing snacks to a meeting I’m required to attend is the same as having an AA meeting at a bar.

I’ve thought of wearing a sign that says, “Please don’t feed the OT,” but people think I’m just a little over the top about things anyway.

I know the way I eat is not good for my health. If I could only convince myself that I am not allowed to eat these things, I could perhaps convince others to question me anytime I start to put any of the “forbidden fruit” – or more accurately, the “forbidden junk food” – into my mouth.

I’m not sure that would work, though.

Well-meaning friends seem to feel a great need to share food. And one of the other therapists made a big deal of going on one of the many advertised weight loss programs one year. She did lose some weight, but had not reached her stated goal when I saw her eating a couple of doughnuts during our end-of-year filing sessions that we do each June.

I didn’t want to make a big deal of it and embarrass her by saying something, but I did mention it to one of the other therapists. She laughed and said, “You didn’t actually think she was dieting, did you?”

So, my colleagues aren’t the ones who will necessarily help me with a word or two about how I’m supposed to be dieting.

I guess I’ll just have to surround myself with photos of myself that should go on the fridge to keep me out of it, and that one really great one at my friend’s wedding.

It could work.

Even if the diet starts on a Wednesday.

Days of Music Passed

I used to like Billy Joel.

Oh, yes, I can hear the gasps and hisses at the words, used to.

I have the first few of his highly successful albums. But that’s the problem: his albums and singles were so successful they were played almost constantly “back in the day.”

However, “back in the day” continues into the present.

I can’t tell you how many weddings I have attended in which “Just the Way You Are” was the bride and groom’s first dance song. In fact, that song alone has been played so many times, hearing it actually makes me nauseous.

If it were just one song, I could deal with that. But every single, it seemed, became a hit. And every hit was played ad nauseum on the radio. Even without listening to ’70s and ’80s stations, it’s a rare day I don’t hear a Billy Joel song on the radio.

Any song played repeatedly becomes tiresome. It takes several years without hearing it for nostalgia to kick in, so that a song, once liked, that has outworn its welcome, becomes a pleasant memory. Even a band that has never recorded a song I didn’t like (The Moody Blues) has one song that continues to be played far too often (“I’m Just a Singer in a Rock n Roll Band”). It has reached the point where I can no longer bear to hear it. But that song, along with Billy Joel’s hits, have yet to reach the point where they’re no longer played. So nostalgia can’t kick in.

It isn’t that I don’t like anything of Billy Joel’s. My favorite album of his is Nylon Curtain. I have two favorite Billy Joel singles: “Goodnight Saigon” and “Always a Woman.”

But even with the favorites, there’s a problem.

“Goodnight Saigon” is very sad for personal reasons. It brings home the aftermath of the Vietnam War that I saw my brother go through.

“Always a Woman” is a sweet, singable melody. But have you ever listened to the words?

I’m not sure if Billy is singing about a particular former  lover or about “Everywoman”. It speaks to me of the latter. And as I listen to the words, I’m ticking off all the things I don’t do. I’m not like that woman. If you listen closely, all of the things he’s letting go about her because “She’s always a woman to me,” make her sound like an absolute witch with a capital B.

 Pretty as the song is, I can’t imagine any woman feeling complemented by the words.

Maybe I look too closely at song lyrics.

“Just enjoy the song!”

But the words nag: If you’re female, this is you.

To which I say, Anyone ready for a little “Nights in White Satin?”