We watched Home Alone 2 this weekend with the younger BoilerBabies. It was released 18 years ago, so it's not exactly a revelation of Biblical proportions that there have been some noticeable changes since then. But some of those changes are reminders of how fast things have changed.
The McCallister family is headed on vacation, and they have airline tickets! Not e-tickets, but the real paper tickets in an airline envelope, something the younger BBs have never seen and the older ones probably don't remember.
O'Hare Airport looks a little dated, but what's particularly striking is how quickly a huge family gets through security. Of course, this was before 9/11. There was no requirement to show a government-issued ID, slip one's shoes off, and submit to a full-body scan before heading to the gate. And had little Kevin ran onto a plane without a valid boarding pass in today's world, he might have experienced a quick introduction to the air marshals. Kevin's visit to the Twin Towers drove home the point of the setting being in a pre-9/11 world.
Finally, as usual, the technology establishes its own time stamp. There are some large, clunky electronic things, but it was Kevin's Polaroid camera that brought on the nostalgia. "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" just can't have the same meaning now that Polaroid cameras are obsolete.
There may be other things that I missed, given that as usual, I was multi-tasking (a phrase that might not have been in common parlance when the movie was released), but this I know: the kids laughed just as much as if the movie had been released last week.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Omigosh, I am SO old??
In just 2 hours and 11 minutes, Iwill no longer start my age with the digit "4." This is my last day in my 40s, and I'm okay with that.
When I was a child, 20-somethings were big people, adults, that is until I got to my 20s and felt like an imposter playing dress-up. Then 30 seemed so old--until I got to 30. It seemed anti-climactic in fact. The only thing that changed was that I stopped adding a year to my age with each birthday. I realized it when I started to tell someone I was 30 when in fact I was 33. Oops!
The age of 40 was even more anticlimactic. There was too much going on. The most memorable thing about 40 was that I was stung by a bee, for the first time ever, on my birthday. Lucky me.
So what thoughts do I have about turning 50? Well, it sounds really, really old. Fifty years. One-half century. Old enough to be a member of AARP. Senior discounts, here I come!
Plus, so much has happened that when related to younger folk, it makes me sound old. I have an adult child, for goodness sake! In my lifetime, I've seen the advent of cheap electronics, from calculators ($400 when I started high school) to the home computer. My iPhone has more functionality than the computers aboard the first Apollo space ships. Oh, and there was that first moon-landing that I witnessed live.
I would sound like an old fogey should I start to talk about the price of things "back in the day." I'll be able to regale my grandchildren with stories of purchasing 45s for 99 cents and LPs for $7.00 ($12.00 for double albums). Oh yes, I can remember when candy bars were 10 cents and even a nickel bought a bag of penny candy. Fifty cents bought enough candy to share with the neighborhood.
On a more serious note, I was born into a country where it was perfectly legal to discriminate against Blacks and women for no other reason than that they were Blacks and women. Only as an adult did I apprecate my mother's accomplishment in being able to qualify for mortgage as a widowed, Black woman. That didn't occur until after the passage of the various civil rights acts, but discrimination was so endemic that obtaining a loan with three strikes against her (female, single, and Black) was almost unheard of at that time.
Had I grown up in the South, I might have sipped from the water fountain set aside for "Negroes." I was 6 or 7 years old before the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia. Women lawyers (or for that matter, female bus drivers) were rare, virtually an object of curiosity.
I suppose I could go on, but the simple fact is a lot has happened. But . . . I don't feel my age. I started this morning with a walk/run in which I felt great! Endorphins are my friends. My mother, God bless her, couldn't run 50 yards when she was 50 years old. On a good day, I can jog three miles, and four miles on a really good day.
I have no grandchildren, and no expectation of any anytime soon. I do have, however, a six-year old. Plus, I'm still too young to qualify for the best senior citizen discounts.
So, tomorrow, I cross an artificial and arbitrary line. But the simple fact is that life (God willing) goes on and life is good. I expect that there will be little difference between today and tomorrow, besides a little cake (okay a lotta cake) and ice cream.
When I was a child, 20-somethings were big people, adults, that is until I got to my 20s and felt like an imposter playing dress-up. Then 30 seemed so old--until I got to 30. It seemed anti-climactic in fact. The only thing that changed was that I stopped adding a year to my age with each birthday. I realized it when I started to tell someone I was 30 when in fact I was 33. Oops!
The age of 40 was even more anticlimactic. There was too much going on. The most memorable thing about 40 was that I was stung by a bee, for the first time ever, on my birthday. Lucky me.
So what thoughts do I have about turning 50? Well, it sounds really, really old. Fifty years. One-half century. Old enough to be a member of AARP. Senior discounts, here I come!
Plus, so much has happened that when related to younger folk, it makes me sound old. I have an adult child, for goodness sake! In my lifetime, I've seen the advent of cheap electronics, from calculators ($400 when I started high school) to the home computer. My iPhone has more functionality than the computers aboard the first Apollo space ships. Oh, and there was that first moon-landing that I witnessed live.
I would sound like an old fogey should I start to talk about the price of things "back in the day." I'll be able to regale my grandchildren with stories of purchasing 45s for 99 cents and LPs for $7.00 ($12.00 for double albums). Oh yes, I can remember when candy bars were 10 cents and even a nickel bought a bag of penny candy. Fifty cents bought enough candy to share with the neighborhood.
On a more serious note, I was born into a country where it was perfectly legal to discriminate against Blacks and women for no other reason than that they were Blacks and women. Only as an adult did I apprecate my mother's accomplishment in being able to qualify for mortgage as a widowed, Black woman. That didn't occur until after the passage of the various civil rights acts, but discrimination was so endemic that obtaining a loan with three strikes against her (female, single, and Black) was almost unheard of at that time.
Had I grown up in the South, I might have sipped from the water fountain set aside for "Negroes." I was 6 or 7 years old before the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia. Women lawyers (or for that matter, female bus drivers) were rare, virtually an object of curiosity.
I suppose I could go on, but the simple fact is a lot has happened. But . . . I don't feel my age. I started this morning with a walk/run in which I felt great! Endorphins are my friends. My mother, God bless her, couldn't run 50 yards when she was 50 years old. On a good day, I can jog three miles, and four miles on a really good day.
I have no grandchildren, and no expectation of any anytime soon. I do have, however, a six-year old. Plus, I'm still too young to qualify for the best senior citizen discounts.
So, tomorrow, I cross an artificial and arbitrary line. But the simple fact is that life (God willing) goes on and life is good. I expect that there will be little difference between today and tomorrow, besides a little cake (okay a lotta cake) and ice cream.
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