Technology Sucks... and I'm Thankful!

This article is a reprint from a column I pen each month for the website of my high school class www.DanMccarty70.com.  While it has been over four decades since the 400+ of us exploded from the halls of Dan McCarthy High and into our lives, today over 250 of us still meet on a regular basis in cyberspace to remember, smile and stay in touch.  I hope you enjoy my Ramblings.

Technology Sucks… and I’m Thankful!

As is normally the case, my Ramblings are just that—ramblings. Like a Ping-Pong ball dancing down a staircase, I seldom have predetermined crystal-clear thoughts or a defined direction for them. Rather, the inspiration might begin with a fleeting thought, an image, TV commercial, or even a single word. Then, my God-given imagination unceremoniously blends with a dash of my unique warped outlook. Voilà, my newest Rambling emerges like a chick cracking through the warmth and safety of its shell, so do my thoughts leave the dark, yet safe, recesses of my mind, appearing for all to see and judge.

Yes, this creative process can be a bit unnerving but, in the end, worth the risk when a single word of praise or passing thank-you underpins the effort. This month, these Ramblings seems to have the velocity of Niagara Falls after an upstream monsoon.  An avalanche of these thoughts just keeps tumbling to my awaiting keyboard, much to the delight of some and the dismay of others. Anyway, for better or worse, here is another—enjoy.

This month, four November events caught my attention: Veterans Day on November 11, which produced my last Rambling; my 61^st birthday (can that be true?) on the 20^th; and, this year, a rare sharing of Thanksgiving and the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, conjuring two diametrically opposed thought processes nestled snugly on the 22^nd day of the Topaz month.

As for the first part of this Rambling’s title—Technology Sucks—I should finish my thought… Technology Sucks, until it works. I, like you, was born pre-e-mail. Ah, those were the good old days when talking to others or writing them a note was the only acceptable method of communication. I did hear tell of some Vero Beach Indians using smoke signals, but that is a thought for a different Rambling. Go, Eagles!

Then enters the cyber-fast, ever-intrusive e-mail, stacking like cordwood in our inbox—a never-ceasing inflow of sometimes useful, but usually not, information that someone feels we must have. Ways for us to lose weight, for men to gain inches (remember that would have made you blush), to find the love of your life (in Russia), and a foolproof way to claim $11,843,832.77 in unclaimed funds waiting for you in Uganda. Oh, yes, such very valuable bits of data flow into your always waiting inbox. Whatever did we do pre-e-mail?

Couple this with the minute-by-minute updates by Twitter and Facebook sharing such important information as what you are having for lunch and what you watched on TV the night before, and the Information Age has fully enveloped the Boomer generation—for better or worse.

On Tuesday morning, the 20^th, with little more on my mind than a java jolt from slumber, I stumbled to the coffeepot. As I eased my well-padded butt into my well-padded home-office chair, awaking my computer screen from its hibernation mode, I was greeted by my ever-present Gmail inbox. Even through sleep-laden eyes, I could see my inbox indeed runneth over.

Oh, yes, it was my birthday, how could I have forgotten. This graying, plumper version of that skinny 17-year-old kid who roamed the breezeways of DMHS, had just completed his sixty-first lap around the sun—without as much as a sunburn.

I could not repress a smile as it started in the corner of my mouth and slowly spread to an ear-to-ear grin. I had mail! And, boy, did I have a lot of it. Today, technology was my friend, as friend after friend sent me his or her birthday wishes.
Now, I am a Christmas guy. I’ve never been much for birthdays, even as a kid. But I am here to tell you there is something cool about more than forty friends remembering your birthday. OK, I know that most were not crossing off the days on their wall calendar, waiting to pop the champagne corks and throw the confetti. But dad-gum-it, they remembered my dad-gum birthday and they were hoping that it was a good birthday—how cool is that? My best buds, casual acquaintances, old girlfriends, cheerleaders, jocks, band members, Key Clubbers, Interact dudes, SLC, Keyettes gals (back when ettes was not sexist), the Campus Life gang, and even a horde of friends who did not know the glory days of the last graduating class of DMHS.
Through the class websites of ‘70, ‘69, ’68, and ’71, the birthday wishes rolled in, intertwined with postings on Mark Zuckerberg’s billion-person playpen—Facebook. It seemed that everyone wanted me to have a great birthday. OK, maybe I am reading a bit more into this than I should, but after all, for fifty plus years, I was fortunate if more than a half-dozen nonfamily members even knew it was my birthday. Now, enough people to fill four football teams took the time to say Happy Birthday to a Christmas guy.

It made me think. How many people could I have brought joy to by just wishing them happy birthday? As Snoopy would say as he was again shot down by the Bloody Red Baron, “cursed, foiled again.” Well, that mistake is easy to correct, and I strongly encourage you to do the same. All you have to do is go to the Class website home page, and on the right-hand side, you will see the upcoming birthdays. Click the name, and type a message. It is that simple.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctMDbCM5nZA

Now, for the second half of the title of this Rambling—“and I’m Thankful.” Do I really need to explain? Our little group of Boomers has so much to be thankful for. I was thinking today as I sat to write this Rambling that I really won the cosmic crapshoot. These are a few things I am thankful for today.

• First, I am thankful I am not in the “In Memory” section of the class site.  I’m still alive and kickin’ and that is pretty cool within itself. Yea Richard!

• I am thankful that I was born in America—free and able to do anything I choose and, sometimes, things I should not have chosen. The freedom to vote as I want and worship as I please without fear of precaution.

• I am thankful I had to shovel very little snow growing up in Florida. (Remember 1977, hence, the “very little” part of this sentence.)

• I am thankful for growing up with the best music of the century. (Thank God, pre-rap).

• I am thankful for a group of friends like you who, in the words of Mitch Hilburn, “It only takes a phone call to bring an army of friends ready to help.” I am also thankful I have not had to make that call… as of yet Mitch.

• I am thankful for both old friends I’ve known and loved for fifty years and my new friends whom I maybe did not know well in school but today treasure more than they know.

• I am thankful for a wife of more than thirty years who has chosen, for some reason yet to be explained to me, to spend her life with a throwback to the sixties like me. Thank you, Joan.

• I am always thankful for three wonderful grandkids (or, as Doc says, grandmonsters), and I am mostly thankful for my grown sons—just kidding, Wayne and Shane.   I am also thankful for the 2 ½ years I had with little Josh before he was called home – I will see you there son.  And that makes me thankful for my salvation that assures me that the best is to come.

• I am thankful for my oldest granddaughter Brittney who, by enrolling this fall at FSU, taught this long-time Gator fan that during this Saturday’s Florida/Florida State game, there are two teams on the field and the short distance from a chomp to a chop it really is. I love you Kiddo

• I am thankful for a country that can, as we just saw, elect leaders without tanks in the streets or one drop of bloodshed. In any case, thank God, the TV ads are over.

• I am thankful for all the little things I have been able to experience in my lifetime: rock and roll; bellbottom jeans; space shots going up; the Berlin Wall coming down; light shows (can you say Chester’s Left Leg); the burning of the Indian; victory dances, even when we lost; the birth of digital everything; the Internet, cast nets and of course fishnet stockings; the Civil Rights Act of ‘64 and Woodstock of ‘69; the burning of bras (I really liked this one); the creation of Earth Day; muscle cars, and VW Bugs; flower power and power to the people; WQAM, Jimmy Barr, satellite radio (and Cousin Brucie); the DMHS Band playing “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey-ey, good-bye“ after a win; Mr. Larsen, Mr. Diggs, and George Bass; Stunt Nights, Rat Day, All-School Parties, and Pep Rallies; driving around Bill’s Burger while smelling frying onions, driving over Tickle Tummy Hill while smelling the bakery, surfing on North Beach, parking on South Beach, and paddling the inlet; Mad Magazine, the Santa Lucian, Halsey and Griffith, Simonsen’s Restaurant, Joyce Motors, and Rubin’s(the store and the girl). I am thankful for first cars, first dates, and first kisses, first best friends, and even first broken hearts—all of which happened in dear old Ft. Pierce.

Thanks for the Origional Artwork Doc - you missed your calling :-)

• I am actually thankful for technology because, without it, we as a class would not have gotten back together. We have more than 225 on our website, and I am certain that, without it, there would be fewer of us in touch, and I would get only a fraction of the birthday wishes I now get. By the way, I feel myself moving slowing from only a Christmas guy to a birthday/Christmas guy… Happy Birthday to me… Happy Birthday to me… etc. etc.

So, on this Thanksgiving Day, maybe we should all stop and think of all we have to be thankful for. And if that something turns out to be a someone, why not pick up your high-tech smart phone and call them to let him or her know. Or you could always help fill his or her inbox – then “They’ve Got Mail”.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.

 

Keeping the Spirit Alive

Richard Parker