Home Alone

I'm sorry if I seem to delve into history a lot these days, but I'm just trying to help the social studies teachers among us with my good-old-boy reminiscences of the good old days.  I feel that a lot of young people are interested in my rambling walks down Memory Lane.  Many of the people who have my memories foisted upon them use such laudatory adjectives as hypnagogic, somniferous, somnolent, sleep-inducing, and soporiferous to describe those narratives.

At least they got their rest!

Going back to the days when people would go away, sometimes for school, sometimes for jobs, sometimes in the service, they would communicate by letters or the occasional long-distance phone call. People would wait until the rates went down at 6 PM, and then they would use a three-minute egg timer to make sure they didn't get charged for a longer call.

It resulted in conversations like, "I saw the O'Hoolahans at the mall the other day...he told me he needed to see you about something next time you're here...Hutzler's had a sale on those plaid pants you like. but that was last week...It seems to be getting dark earlier now...the best way to make oatmeal is to get the steel-cut oats and let them soak overnight...gotta go! Bye!"

And then along came the cell phone, with its free long distance calls all over the world and messaging platforms.  This means that no one individual is ever un-reachable. I've known people fighting in wars overseas who call their family back home at night. A student having a hard time dealing with being away from home can hear the welcoming voices of Mom, Dad, and Uncle Franz saying that Thanksgiving isn't that far away, and long distance truckers can hear the same radio programs over satellite radio, be they in Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine, and can also help tuck in the kids as they haul another load of potatoes away to market.

That's the new world of today, everyone is connected, and there's no time to be alone.

For the record, this gentleman is not I.

Or, there WAS no time, until the quarantine began. It's my hunch that people who are older (ahem) are used to the days of solitude and not having people all up in either their grill or their grille. By that, it's easy to see why this quarantine is not such a big deal. When you have spent a significant amount of time crouched underneath your elementary school desk with your hands over your head to protect yourself from nuclear fallout, when you grew up with the choice of only channels 2, 11, and 13 (plus 5 from Washington on a good day), and when you had to drive to the Drugs 'N' More with a dime to make a photocopy of your tax return, staying home and doing nothing with anyone is not all that hard to take.