At Dennis' family reunion, one of our newest Kewpie-doll cousins--at least twice removed--was running about the jungle of adult legs, Mamma's cellphone in hand. Mamma, understandably enough, was in hot pursuit of her--or, perhaps more aptly, the phone.
I leaned close to Dennis and observed (sotto vocce, of course) that the little blonde cutie-pie will probably grow up in a world that can't wrap its brain around a phone that doesn't have pictures and interactive icons and text.
As the festivities were winding down, I stepped into a conversation Dennis was having with the youngest of his Dad's brothers, now pushing 80. (But, being a farmer, he'll "retire" work-boots first, naturally.) Uncle C. doesn't quite fit the stereotype of the old-school Wisconsin farmer in a number of ways. Or, on second thought, maybe he does. Because he--from my limited acquaintance, anyway--adapts with a speed and readiness that's instructive for the likes of me. And he groks the fact that the internet--for all the garbage it contains--puts a stupefying amount of knowledge literally at your fingertips.
But Uncle C. also shared a glimpse into his Depression-era sensibilities...a world largely defined by what one couldn't afford. He, for instance, didn't know what a sundae was until his older brother--flush with the cash of his WWII Army paycheck--treated him to the choice between that and the equally mysterious "malt."
Which is about when the epiphany hit and I realized that, for all the noise that each generation makes about the thing it can count as bedrock certainties, an equally powerful touchstone is the thing that it doesn't know. And, before anyone thinks to trivialize telephones and ice cream treats, I will note that my own mother grew up in the shadow of polio (before the vaccine became commonplace). Not to mention what a mind-blowing luxury of clean, safe drinking water is in some corners of a planet three-quarters covered by sea water.
There's a reason that I never, ever feel superior to my predecessors regarding the things that they had to know to survive. You can make all the ballyhoo you want about the information that's available online today vs. what was painstakingly copied to papyrus or vellum centuries ago. The things that no one except the most pedantic would even think of uploading--much more taking for granted--are, to my mind, somewhat more telling than the "gee-whiz" navel-gazing to which tech paparazzi seem to be so prone.
