It’s been really cold this week, and it’s supposed to get even colder by this weekend. I’ve been preparing by stocking up on essentials, breaking out a jigsaw puzzle and this morning, I decided to fill up my gas tank before the truly frigid weather set in. I pulled into a station I don’t normally use, and was amazed to see that there was a little screen on the gas pump, right next to the slot for my credit card. Not the usual screen that provides instructions on operating the pump, but an actual little television screen, airing real commercials. I was dumbfounded, to say the least.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t generally make decisions regarding my bedding when I’m filling my car with gasoline, so why anyone thought I’d want to see a mattress commercial just then is beyond me. By the time I was done and replacing the pump, it had progressed to an ad for insurance, which made a bit more sense. But I still found the whole thing terribly annoying. The sound was turned up loud, and I actually had to wait for the commercial to end before I could print my receipt.
I’ve been feeling a little out of touch with the world for a long-time now, but this might well be the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” Because I think I’m done. I’ve tried my best to keep up with our ever-changing world: adapting to the endless new technologies, trying to keep up with the latest trends, and accepting things that I don’t even begin to understand. Isn’t that what we’re told we’re supposed to do, if we want to stay young? Be willing to learn new things, embrace change, pay attention to the latest fashions, and invest a small fortune in skin care products? Because otherwise we’re nothing but a bunch of useless old fogies with one foot in the grave, right?
But I no longer care. I’m done pretending that I don’t sometimes struggle with technologies that weren’t invented until decades after I was born. I’m willing to admit that I think a whole lot of our current trends are just plain silly, and that they’ll go the way of the naval contemplation of the Sixties and the green shag carpeting of the Seventies. I believe that it’s okay for houses to have walls and that body hair isn’t always something to be afraid of. I admit to preferring printed receipts, real books, and brick and mortar stores. Most of all, I believe that time spent by myself, off-line and unplugged, is both valuable and necessary for my basic sanity.
When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’ve seen too many things come and go to be terribly impressed with whatever the “latest and best” happens to be. And you realize that although the world is always changing, basic human nature mostly remains the same. You’ve figured out what’s important and what’s not, and you try very hard to embrace only the changes that are actually for the good.
So I’m okay with admitting that I have no use for gas pumps that try to sell me a mattress, or anything else other than gasoline. From now on, I’m not only accepting my inner old fogy, I’m embracing her……