BACK IN MY DAY
On this day of the Lord, January 10th, 2023 I'd like to announce my entrance into a special age group. Having been oldish for some time, I have now entered that most hallowed ground of respect where more of my stories than not start with "back in my day." I'd avoided this for many years through shear will, but it appears that the salad days are over. Please send me my corduroy pants and Metamucil.
Further, I have realized that my generation has an obligation, nay a moral imperative to teach the younger generations about the things that are important.
The older consumers of this weblog, the official name of a blog, will say we've dropped the ball. We should have been teaching these kids some manners and some ways of the world. I'd like to remind y'all that you allowed a generation of air travelers migrate from suits to basically pajamas so pump the brakes.
What I noticed and realized over the last few months is how little I tell both my kids and the kids I coach about the past, while still expecting them to have a working knowledge therein.
How are they supposed to learn if I keep all this greatness in my head?
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Day in and day out I walk through my life and make decisions and take actions based on
my life experiences. There's also usually a soundtrack playing in my head to get me through the day. Almost all day I think about the past. Not from regret, but from a "theres that church on LSU's campus. I remember walking to class and stopping and taking a picture of a manhole cover under an oak tree between that and the Law School. This reminds me of the Drivin N Cryin album, Whisper Tames the Lion." I take a right and continue on.
On the daily there are a sundry such things I for sure know no one knows about. I fear they will be lost forever.
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Over the last holidays I became acutely aware of my perception of time. The early 90's (1989-1994, the only meaningful definition respected by any Gen X-er worth their salt) was 32 years ago. If I juxtaposed this same spread of years against my life, this means that the period I want the young ones to glean meaning from would have been 1957-1961. I shudder. This doesn't even take into consideration the 80's! For fuck's sake. I've got work to do.
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I've alluded before to the max-impact zone of our lives being 15-24 ish. I stand by that. Not that good and wonderful things don't happen later, they just don't seem as life forming or maybe don't maintain as constant a place in our headspace. I'll stand by this. The above example, for someone in their 50's is 35 years prior, and we don't orate those times very much. I was talking to my 18 year old son just last night and the same can be said about the last 20 years.
We were talking about a documentary one of the cross country kids is working on about the last season. He had sent a promo about it and it has me speaking over the video, the audio taken from the TEDxLSU talk I did in 2013. When I heard it, I had a hard enough time placing it and my son asked if I had just recorded it for the documentary. I realized that despite all of these things going through my head constantly I hadn't told my kid much about me. About the things I'd done. The things that I was proud of.
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So what's the point you ask?
I think it's this.
Revel in your past achievements. Through speaking them aloud we give relevance and meaning to our pasts. We should do this.
Share them with the young people you interact. For me if a kid's only 90's music point of view is Nirvana and or god forbid, Backstreet Boys, tell them about the rest. The little bands and the "scene".
Tell your kids about phones and answering machines and as I learned just this morning, the little sandwich bags that fold over (remember when ziplocks were a luxury item?). The little things that we interacted with day in and day out that seem to be fading away into irrelevance.
Make a choice each week to start a sentence with "BACK IN MY DAY!" Tell said story with pride. If you don't remember it aloud...
Did it even happen?
#hugsandhi5s
