The More Things Change

I think I’m finally starting to grasp that the more things change, the more they do anything but stay the same.

At 35 I shouldn’t feel too lost in the shuffle that is the technological advancement of society. I Facebook. Some. I tweet. Some. And of course I blog. Some. Yet here I sit before you feeling lost and out of place in a world that’s constantly changing. I’m not sure if I can keep up. I don’t know if I want to keep up.

Last night was my Chicano Literature class. When I tell people I’m taking Chicano Lit they either look at me as if something’s terribly wrong or feel sorry that I’m being forced to take such an awful class. Between you and me, I willingly chose to take the class and to be frank, I really enjoy it. But none of this has anything to do with my point.

What this does have to do with my point was the discussion we were having about becoming a leader/hero – whether or not you’re born to be a leader/hero, can be groomed to be a leader/hero, or just one day wake up and find yourself taking on the role of a leader/hero. This one girl made the comment that “I don’t think as parents you can raise your child to be a hero.”

My reaction? She has clearly never seen Smallville. Jonathan and Martha Kent, in my superior and all-knowing opinion, raised Clark to be a hero. It was his Kryptonian destiny. But then I remembered, just before class this same girl boasted of not having a television because everything she needed could be found on the Internet.

This is a huge problem for me. I could care less that she doesn’t own a TV; I’m more than a little on the fence about having almost everything we want right there at our technological fingertips. Sure, being able to stream a movie from Netflix is all sorts of greatness. Yes, being able to download movies and music to a portable device makes for a more enjoyable road trip, provided you remembered to charge said portable device before leaving the house. Sure you can download a book to yet another portable device so that you have something of substance to read on the plane while flying to Washington, D.C. But where will it end?

I was talking to a friend at work the other day and we were reminiscing of how in the early 80’s renting a video meant having to rent a VCR too. We both remembered how it was such a letdown to get to the video store, find the movie you’d been pestering your parents all week about renting, and then be told by the clerk at the counter that they were all out of VCRs. It makes me sad to think that my children will never know the triumph of scoring the last VCR in stock, riding home in a crowded station wagon with six or seven VHS tapes that are yours and only yours for the next two days, and then being endowed the responsibility that comes with knowing you’re in charge of being kind and rewinding. And now the video store is nearing extinction. I should start a foundation to save them. The video store will be the new Dodo Bird.

Frustratingly too, my kids will never know the defeat that comes with spending hours making the perfect mixed tape only to hear the dreaded “click” of the recorder signaling that the cassette tape has run out of space on Side B two minutes into a four  minute and twenty-three second song and have to start all over. From the beginning. Now they have playlists. Where’s the fun in that?

And don’t get me started on this whole electronic book thing. I for one enjoy the feel of holding a book in my hands and the total control that comes with turning from one page to the next. I love the way that grabbing a hard cover book out of my backpack only to realize that one of its corners was accidently crumpled during the shuffle of my day makes me sad. I relish going to the public library to look for a specific book only to feel the frustration of learning that like Fivel from An American Tail it’s currently floating somewhere out there, overdue and tagged with an unknown return date. I also like the unexpected joy that finding a previous reader’s airline ticket tucked tightly between two pages of the randomly selected library book I ended up settling for brings. This forgotten remnant of a trip to Washington, D.C. momentarily transforms itself from simply being some stranger’s ticket home to the ticket which gives my imagination permission to get lost in the curiosity of how this person spent their time in our nation’s capital. Was it for business? A chance to engage in all of the history the city has to offer? To steal something of unknown significance from the Spy Museum and return it to an underground faction of communist Russia?

I’m afraid my kids will grow up to only know a life in which everything they could ever want is just a mouse-click away and miss out on one of the greatest emotions childhood has to offer: the euphoria that is anticipation – all because the more things change, the more they just stay changed.

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