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days of wine and roses
May. 18th, 2006 07:27 pmWe've had a couple of slow days at work, which means I have lots of time to think of things to post to LJ about. Occasionally even time to read it too, even if I can't follow any of the links.
I was grumpy on a mailing list the other day - not one where any of you would have seen it. It's a local list and I'm actually thinking of just dropping it. Any time there is anything resembling any kind of debate going on, the list-owners delete all the entries, saying "Feelings are running high". Whatever.
The post that got me going was just one of those dopey forwards about how idyllic life was when we were all kids. I'm sure you've all seen them, they talk about technology long gone and paint a sunny picture of how innocent we all were Back In The Day. There are dozens of them out there and there's always at least one line in every one that makes me froth at the mouth.
In this particular one? "Remember when everybody's mother was home when you got home from school?"
No I fucking don't pal, because I didn't live in the tree-lined suburbia of Leave It To Beaver. I lived in run-down apartments where the kids wore a key on a string around their neck or played with their friends until 6:00 because there was nobody home to let them in before then. The only ones who had parents who were home all the time were the ones where eveybody lived behind the family store, and they were generally stocking shelves from the time they were old enough to lift a tomato soup can.
The whole "remember when air was clean and sex was dirty" thing just annoys me in general. I'm sure the people who initially compiled those lists do have fond memories of their childhoods. But how self-involved do you have to be not to know that it wasn't like that for everybody? I know it wasn't just in my neighbourhood where kids went to school with broken arms from "falling down the stairs". Or where somebody's mother was regularily spotted in the supermarket wearing big sunglasses indoors and long sleeves in the summer.
The innocent youths I remember doled out bloody beatings on a regular basis. A girl barely old enough to have breasts who was held down and groped in the schoolyard was told "Stay away from them." or "Stop encouraging them" by her teachers. And God was the only one who would have mercy on you if somebody spread the rumour you were gay.
Then there was the kid I knew who was burned in his bed and had plastic surgery six times before he was ten. Or the one who returned to school after getting out of rehab at 13.
I'm glad the people who wrote those emails had an idyllic childhood. I wish more people had idyllic childhoods. I sure as hell wish I had an idyllic childhood. I genuinely like hearing about the idyllic childhoods of people I know.
But assuming that being young and innocent and helpless was the same experience for everybody who went through it is blithely ignoring the fact that not everybody got to have the same life they did. And sending the email around with that bubbly "remember when" 'tude as if everybody who reads it can automatically relate is an act of such profound self-involvement that it Pisses Me Off.
I say my life is good now and I have lots of reasons to really mean it. I have no reason to idealize the past.
I was grumpy on a mailing list the other day - not one where any of you would have seen it. It's a local list and I'm actually thinking of just dropping it. Any time there is anything resembling any kind of debate going on, the list-owners delete all the entries, saying "Feelings are running high". Whatever.
The post that got me going was just one of those dopey forwards about how idyllic life was when we were all kids. I'm sure you've all seen them, they talk about technology long gone and paint a sunny picture of how innocent we all were Back In The Day. There are dozens of them out there and there's always at least one line in every one that makes me froth at the mouth.
In this particular one? "Remember when everybody's mother was home when you got home from school?"
No I fucking don't pal, because I didn't live in the tree-lined suburbia of Leave It To Beaver. I lived in run-down apartments where the kids wore a key on a string around their neck or played with their friends until 6:00 because there was nobody home to let them in before then. The only ones who had parents who were home all the time were the ones where eveybody lived behind the family store, and they were generally stocking shelves from the time they were old enough to lift a tomato soup can.
The whole "remember when air was clean and sex was dirty" thing just annoys me in general. I'm sure the people who initially compiled those lists do have fond memories of their childhoods. But how self-involved do you have to be not to know that it wasn't like that for everybody? I know it wasn't just in my neighbourhood where kids went to school with broken arms from "falling down the stairs". Or where somebody's mother was regularily spotted in the supermarket wearing big sunglasses indoors and long sleeves in the summer.
The innocent youths I remember doled out bloody beatings on a regular basis. A girl barely old enough to have breasts who was held down and groped in the schoolyard was told "Stay away from them." or "Stop encouraging them" by her teachers. And God was the only one who would have mercy on you if somebody spread the rumour you were gay.
Then there was the kid I knew who was burned in his bed and had plastic surgery six times before he was ten. Or the one who returned to school after getting out of rehab at 13.
I'm glad the people who wrote those emails had an idyllic childhood. I wish more people had idyllic childhoods. I sure as hell wish I had an idyllic childhood. I genuinely like hearing about the idyllic childhoods of people I know.
But assuming that being young and innocent and helpless was the same experience for everybody who went through it is blithely ignoring the fact that not everybody got to have the same life they did. And sending the email around with that bubbly "remember when" 'tude as if everybody who reads it can automatically relate is an act of such profound self-involvement that it Pisses Me Off.
I say my life is good now and I have lots of reasons to really mean it. I have no reason to idealize the past.