Yellowriter

Okay, for the twelve of you out there in Cyberspace waiting for the Yellowriter to post, your time has come.  I really am way behind in all of this social networking, but I don’t mind at all.  Living in 1975 (most of the time) has advantages for me.  What has happened to me in the last couple of years is what will more than likely happen to many, you get left behind.

Being left behind is not generally thought of as a positive.  We have a politically backed program called “No Child Left Behind.”  In the military the code of honor demands that “No man is left behind.”  I think it should now be “No One Left Behind” because of the growing contributions of females in the military.  The point is that being left behind is a natural occurrence in this little deal we call life.

Lauren is our youngest and she just completed Basic Trainging in the Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.  They taught her discipline, military bearing and integrity.  Lauren will not be leaving anyone behind.  I found it interesting to be back in the place that I had went to Basic Training at 33 years earlier.  I got my bearings by finding the McDonald’s golden arches.  In 1977, I would dream of one day busting out of that place and treating myself to a Big Mac and fries.  I was the youngest in my flight and I did have my share of trouble.  Lauren, I am proud to say, finished at the top of her flight, unlike me.  So off we went to Texas to spend 4 glorious days with Airman Lauren.  David, our son in the Navy, just got back from deployment in Kuwait and he flew over from San Diego and joined us.  It was a great time.  We did the River Walk, saw Avatar and a bunch of other stuff.  The hard part was not eating all the junk that seemed to pop up before us at the mall.  We saw the Alamo, ate, watched a movie, ate, took the boat tour, ate some more…I think you’re getting the idea.  On Monday, February 1st, Lauren boarded a bus to go to Witchita Falls, Texas and Annie, Dave and I went to Seattle.  At the end of four days, Navy Davey was gone and our house was quiet once again.

There is a peacefulness that comes around this time of year.  Halloween precedes Thanksgiving and then it’s hectic for Christmas and New Years’.  Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day kind of round out the craziness for us.  So now we have to get a routine that doesn’t involve travel and parties.  This is my 1975 time - it is simple.

Just as it is important to gear up for all the action, it is equally important to know when to take it down a notch and relax.  Annie suggested I take a part time job.  One looked kind of interesting, but the hours were 2 to 5.  That’s my nap time…when I feel like it.  The goal for today is to enjoy today.  I want to make a joke about almost everything in my day.  It feels so good to laugh.  Sometimes I laugh myself right into a nap.  Today I plan to finish this blog and walk/run five miles before the sun goes down.  You might be saying, “Good luck with that,” but I will make it happen.  I may even laugh about it later.  I guess in all the hubub (is that even a word?) I don’t plan on leaving myself behind.  If that means that I’ll E-mail or (persish the thought) snail mail someone as part of my day, so be it. 

The moral of the Air Force story is that things really are not that different from 33 years ago.  Sure technology is awesome, but wanna know what is even better than all of that electronic gizmo stuff?  People.  People are better.  Put down your I-Phone and get to know a few of them.  That’s what we did daily in 1975.   And we loved it!

It’s 2010 and this is my first blog of the new decade.  I think I’m one of six people who still blog, since billions of others are on to new mediums and, ah yes, social networking.  When MySpace.com hit the scene, Annie and I were unaware how much time and energy that this little bugger was going to suck out of our childrens’ minds.  We only had a family computer back then and we almost had to have a reservation to take a seat in front of the old 17 inch monitor that weighed about the same as George Foreman (Pick a George, any George!).  The complaints of “time to do homework” were soon to be found a smoke screen for “social networking.”  We didn’t call it that at the time, but who knows where technology may lead?

The first big bust with MySpace came when one of our daughters met the love of her life in a chat room.  A chat room is a place where mostly strangers converse in cyberspace.  Creepy already, huh?  Alex was a young man in Texas who had designs on one of our girls.  He was 19 and she 17.  He was in college and she was in high school.  Bad mix for dads everywhere.  I over reacted and then we ended up meeting the guy.  He was polite, intelligent and slobbery.  I caught them kissing over and over.  And kids think it’s gross to see their parents kiss!  They ended up broken up and that was that…or was it?

In the mid-seventies, when I was a spry lad, when you ended a relationship you got closure.  That means it’s over. The fat lady has indeed sung and get this, you may go your entire life without ever crossing paths with that person again! Here is another newsflash.  THAT IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE!  Why, you may ask?  I’m glad you did.

We had lunch yesterday with a self avowed Facebook addict.  She spends hours each day checking on people from her past.  She admits that it’s unproductive, but she can’t seem to stop.  Last week she told me that she planned to delete Facebook, but couldn’t go through with it when the time came to press the “Enter” key.  This is dangerous territory, folks.  It is all about compartments in the space time continuum.

My wife says that I have to say, “this is my opinion” when I speak because I tend to get preachy.  She’s right, but this is my blog so you know that this is how I believe.  I think that we live our lives in segments or what I call “Time continuum compartments.”  A person at 51 years of age is simply different than the person he or she was at age 18.  I loved my high school years and I like reunions…for one weekend.  I just don’t want all of the people from that magical time in 1976 to pay me continuous visits in the year of our Lord two thousand and ten!  That was then…this is now.

When a person continually goes across segments of time with the assumption that nothing has changed, damage is done.  We are turning into a mass of emotionally unhealthy people because of regrets from the past.  We all have them.  IF I would have went to that college…IF I would have married that person instead of the loser I ended up with…If I would have waited to have kids!  See the pattern?  Facebook is built on regrets, disappointments and slights.  It simply is not healthy to try to live in the past.

I love science fiction movies, especially those that deal with the past, but did you catch the genre?  It’s fiction.  You cannot change the past.  Marty McFly will not escort you in a Delorean back to 1955, 65, 75 or 1985.  Robin Williams and Kurt Russell made a movie about a football flub that ruined their lives.  The idea was to replay the game to wipe out the regret.  The whole thing was a bust.  Regret is what it is and one simply must accept it and move on.  Facebook will not fix you.

The answer is to live in the here and now.  It isn’t healthy to dialogue with lovers from twenty or thirty years ago.  Facebook can be dangerous because it makes us alter reality, and that is never a good thing.  Satan wants us to live in perpetual regret and thanks to Facebook, he is ruining people through what the media calls “social networking.”  I call it brainwashing.  Don’t get sucked into Facebook and the space time continuum.  Take some advice from someone who has his foot on Regret’s throat - love, laugh and live in today because it is all we have.   

That is a curious phrase, “By the by.”  What it meant a century or two ago was a reference to things that are no longer useful or relevant.  Later terms referred to things like, “a fad” or “a flash in the pan.”  I write this because I realize that I am turning into a bad blogger.  I’m not saying the quality is poor; I’m referring to the quantity.  My blogging has become more and sporatic and I can guess you know why.  The reason is that blogging has gone by the by.

When I was a kid we got our first microwave oven.  It was huge, heavy and noisy, BUT IT HAD A PURPOSE.  Today, I will use a microwave oven.  It is convenient, mounted over our stove and relatively quiet.  It is user friendly and easy to operate.  The point is that this marvel is still performing its magic thirty years after its inception.  Why?  Because IT HAS A PURPOSE.  What is that purpose?  To serve us with convenience and save us some money.  A microwave oven will pay for itself over time (including the electricity it uses) because we don’t waste food - we eat it.  We shall refer to this as evaluating a product/service by how it pays by its purpose.

That’s a good example, but there have been some poor ones.  Remember Laser-Disc movies?  What about bulky Beta-Max?  How about Zip Drives on Computers.  Pagers had their day, but cell phones killed that market.  Technology rules the day, but we have to have the vision to guess which ones will hang around and which ones will bite the dust.  These products were outdone by the better mousetrap!  They don’t pay by purpose and therefore, must be discarded.

Blogging was very cool when it first arrived on the scene.  Alex Pinto, the guru who built and maintains this web-site, used to be enthusiastic about it.  He even bought me a book on how to blog effectively.  When I only blogged once a week, he was disappointed.  Now, not so much.  Why?  What changed?  Blogging is to social networking what cell phones are to I-Phones.  The purpose simply does not pay.  Someone can tweet or twitter and that makes a blogger like me typing in a backdrop from the Jurassic era.  Technology decides what mediums pay by purpose and blogging is right there next to the Creedence Clearwater Revival 8 track tape.  Bye bye blogsters!

But I am a dinosaur; I choose to be.  No, I have never sent a text message.  My two goals in life are  1) Never to kill anyone    and                                                                       

                             2) Never send a text message

Yes, I still have a Zip Drive on one of my four computers.  I just can’t stand to part with the things!  I did get rid of my DOS computer and the one with Windows 95 on it.  When I tried to circulate sermons in my Sunday School class by developing a lending library for the class, whereby they would take CDs from the bin, they looked back at me in horror.  One suggested the ease of I-Pod downloads as an alternative and another wanted to load them on a webite for phones and media players.  My head almost exploded.  I suppose I’ll just drop the whole idea.  Everything anyone REALLY WANTS is just a mouse click away.  But I’ll keep to my backwards ways.

The answer to the question is yes, I will blog on.  They will probably only be monthly, but as you can see, I have a hard time parting with things.  I met a guy yesterday at the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce Luncheon and he began with the tech stuff.  I told him that “I still like to live most of my life in 1975.”  His wife asked about my mood ring and, with a straight face, I told her that it is on my nightstand next to my bed, which it is.  I’ll put it on later and see how this blog affected me.

I guess the question is, “Does this blog affect anyone?”  I guess it does.  It affects me because it gives me an avenue to vent.  Does it pay by purpose?  Psychologically, yes, but financially?  You read the ads on my web-site, didn’t you?  Ha!  Got ya!  Actually my blogging does public good.  When I want to kill the moron who keeps texting me and asking that I text him back, I blog instead of murder.  This pays by keeping me out of the penal system and also pays by making sure blog boy doesn’t go down for a dirt nap!  A lot of things have gone by the by.  Let’s make sure that the ability to laugh at ourselves is never one of the casualties.  

  I went to a couple of parties this week and something came up at both of them that I thought was interesting.  The parties were thrown by a couple of groups of folks in honor of yours truely.  One was a divorce support group that I taught for a number of years and the other were members of my Sunday School class at church.  The topic that popped up was how much things have changed since we were kids in the sixties and seventies.  One guy talked about how his kids were mortified that popcorn didn’t cook in a microwave.  We didn’t have microwaves.  One person told his child that shows were only in black and white and that blew his little mind.  Only three channels?  No VCR or DVD?  No remote?  and the Crem De Le Crem -  No Internet!  Yikes!  I thought about all of this as I am contemplating on-line banking an opening an E-Bay account.  The progress, of us babyboomers, is slow, to be sure, but sure.  Sooner or later we all have to give in and go with the flow.  The future is here - like it or not!  When we were kids shows like Star Trek and Space 1999 led us to believe that we’d be in flying cars by now that run on old banana peels.  Now, we’re more interested in hybrid cars thar get 50 Miles Per Gallon.  It’s all happening and there is no use fighting it.   What about when you can’t write a check and everything must be debited from a chip in your fingernail or somewhere on the body?  Soon DVD rental stores won’t exist - you’ll order movies (probably by voice command) over your satellite-connected Ultra High definition T.V.  Or what about the movie coming to you with a background and 3-D Holigraphic figures standing in your specially-built home theatre?  The Internet will be beamed to your wristwatch!  At those retirement parties thirty years from now people will still be complaining, “My kid didn’t know we used to drive cars instead of fly them!”  Technophobia, the newest, dirty word.

The dictionary did not have the answer-I was ignorant. I thought about asking a guy at work what it meant, but I was afraid he would laugh at me. This world of fast-moving technology can give a guy some real anxiety. I was okay with microwave ovens and automated garage door openers, but then the beta movie system came out and I was lost. The Beta to VHS to Laser Disc (for 12 minutes) and then DVDs. Blue rays, IPODs and camcorders the size of nickels rule the day. My problem, and yours, is keeping up. I did not know what a Blog was and when I saw that Rosie O’donnell was blogging about Kirsti Alley’s alleged weight loss and the two were having a cat fight, I simply had to know. I asked one of my kids to get the answer. Don’t laugh - you do too. My cell phone is another little jewel the kids take care of for me. So take that, Rosie and Kirsti! I wrote my first blog. More to follow, but let’s not discuss weight loss. W