| Sun., Oct. 3, 1999
- Comment I overheard my comforter making to my crazy quilt last night
Sunday. Time to once again piece together an entry using the random
notes and scribblings that have collected on my desk over the last week.
I really need to get myself one of those sticky note brushes that would
allow me to remove and dispose of them all with a single sweep of my hand.
Until I do, expect these crazy quilt Sunday entries to continue indefinitely....
I've been thinking about the meaning and significance of age differences
this week. I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm just a born ponderer,
questioner, and seeker of the deeper truths which shape our lives.
And maybe I'm just trying to forget my hemorrhoids.
My wife is exactly 39 days younger than I am. As near as I can tell, this has never interfered with our ability to misunderstand each other. My sister is almost 10 years older than I am. We grew up having almost nothing in common. That pretty much continues to be the case today. Not all of that can be attributed to our difference in age, though. There's the gender difference, too. And the fact that we had different fathers. But the age difference plays a big part. I can't imagine growing up in the 1950s like she did. I think I would have hanged myself the second time I saw Pat Boone on TV.... My mother is - what? No less than 71 now. Other relatives are even older. It is virtually impossible for me to get into their heads and see the world as they seem to see it. When they were my current age some 30 years ago, they were mostly oblivious to pop culture and world issues alike. It's as if their young minds took photos of WWII and Big Band music and then immediately ran out of film. I've long had a fear of running out of film that same way. I don't think I have yet, but it is getting harder and harder to organize my photo albums.... Since being online I've had the pleasure of cyberly meeting and corresponding with a wide variety of interesting people ranging in age from 17 to 56. Differences have emerged, of course, but to what extent age is responsible, I don't know, though it seems to have been a major factor in the chat room I visited once where a 20-something woman remarked to me, "Aren't you pretty old to be playing these sorts of games?" Being precociously senile, I didn't know what to say....
In writing recently to someone 6 years younger than I am, I realized once
again how much that would have mattered when I was in college and she was
just entering high school and how little it will matter when I'm 96 and
she's 90. But to what extent does it matter now? That is to
say, to what extent does a 6 year difference in age result in a difference
in consciousness? To what extent is that difference a result of varying
pop culture exposures and to what extent is it a function of unavoidable
biological changes which occur as one spends more and more time on this
planet? To what extent are these differences inevitable and universal
and to what extent are they peculiar to individual people, places, times,
and eras?
My wife now finds it almost unbearable to chat anymore with people in their
20s. There are several notable exceptions, but by and large she finds
people in their 20s "immature." If I'm remembering correctly, I think
she means "impulsive, self-centered, and relatively shallow." Gawd,
that sounds like such an "old person" sort of thing to say. Having
myself discovered a couple of marvelously mature Danish correspondents
while they were still in their teens, I prefer to associate "impulsive,
self-centered, and relatively shallow" with "American" rather than "20s"
- but then I recall that I also correspond with at least one American in
her 20s who's not that immature, either, soooo....
Well. I think I have had just about all the crazy quilt making I
can handle for today despite the fact that this particular quilt seems
little more than one big piece of material haphazardly thrown over my monitor.
Leave it to me to start making such a thing as a crazy quilt entry by picking
up a whole big blanket of a note.
Idea For Single Panel Cartoon #714 Little Boy Gesturing To Girl Being Burned At The Stake By A Mob In 17th Century Salem: "Mommy! Mommy! LOOK!" 
(All Material Taken Warm From The Dryer
And ©1999 by D. Birtcher)
NOTE In A Shameless Attempt To Curry Favor With
New York Intellectuals,
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