The Things We Learn

The things that you learn on any random day are amazing. Take tonight for me, I learned that you should not wear cotton under your dri-fit sports shirt because it is really hot. I also learned that my wife was watching a TV show that had all of the couples visiting, some were married, some were married but talking to other people and the grand finally was the couple that was married, got divorced, but still lived together. (That was a show about Alaska or people in Alaska (Men in Trees). I don’t know that I would want to move there if that is how it will be…) the guy in the finally couple was in Chicago in the ER because he had been shot. Evidently he made a great recovery or perhaps it is because he switched shows.

When I was in high school I dated a girl for a while and then she dumped me. She had found true love in Fritch, with a guy with a pool. I was devastated, or at least as devastated as one gets in high school. Several months later she wanted to start dating again. I discussed this issue with one of my closets friends, whom I shall call Fat-boy not because he is fat any more but that is what I have called him for 16 years. He looked at me and said, “J, if you reached down to pet a dog and the dog bit you, are you going to try to pet it again.” I think that we were standing in the cafeteria at the high school, we never at in the cafeteria but that is where we were standing.

I read a commentary on Generation X in the United Methodist Reporter. It was somewhat enlightening. The definition of who a generation X persons is was actually pretty good. The author defined it as, “I have a different concept of how Generation X should be defined. For those of you who consider yourselves to be Gen X-ers, see if this resonates: A Gen X-er is someone whose childhood, adolescence and young adulthood were shaped by experiencing the radical change in practically all of the basic technologies that surround daily human life. (The exceptions, of course, would be the automobiles and domestic technologies such as the washer and dryer, refrigerator and vacuum cleaner.)” (Click here to read the entire article.)That is probably the best definition I have heard for our generation, or my generation. When I think about all the changes that I have seen, even in my child hood, we went from Pong to Atari, Nintendo, the Apple IIC and the Apple IIE. The first computer that I played with was a radio shack T-60 (or something like that). My grandmother bought one, and we played on it. I think she was very intrigued by it partly because it ran off of mathematic principals and she was a math teacher. Today I have a cell phone that harnesses more power and memory then the old Radio Shack computer and it fits in my pocket.