How many of you have seen an episode in a TV series (no particular series) in which a group of good-hearted kids has an encounter with an angry old recluse, or hermit? Most of you? Good. In such shows, there is always one kid in the group who decides to befriend the hermit in order to show him that the world is really a magical, wonderful place. The hermit only wants to be left alone, but the kid won't give up. Finally the hermit has to surrender to the kid's persistence, mostly because the show is almost over, and the audience needs a neat conclusion to a formulaic plot.
When I was a kid, I always rooted for the kid to teach the hermit a lesson in happiness. As a child (and even in adulthood) I befriended my share of cantankerous elderly people, usually with the same goal in mind. Then one day, when I was in college, I think -- and a bit more experienced on the unpleasantness of life --, I was watching yet another "kid-befriends-angry-hermit" program (obviously a popular plot line in Hollywood). As the naive kid (a girl in this episode) tried to befriend the world weary old hermit, I suddenly had a premonition: "I bet I'm going to be one of those angry old hermits some day. If that turns out to be the case, then there is no way some kid is going to feed me a line about how wonderful the world is. Hermits (the non-insane kind) usually become hermits for very good reasons."
It turns out I was right. Every once in a while, and in spite of my not being a senior citizen yet (thank gosh), the hermit in me struggles to take over. I do my best to resist, but I don't always succeed (living in this town hasn't helped matters, either). For the past few days, I've been in my hermit phase (although not in an angry way), and it is a struggle trying to keep in touch with the world, including all you DiaryLanders and Bloggers. Every once in a while, in both the past and the present, one of you will "drop by" and try to drag me out of my isolation. My instincts are to say, "Shoo!" and "Scat!" but I know it would do no good. :-)
So I guess I will honor katm6's request and try to dredge up something insightful for this entry. By the way, she is new a new reader of my diary, and she found me without any help from me! I also have to thank her for "stopping by in person," so to speak, to check up on me. She is pretty persistent (just like one of the kids in the analogy above :-), pretty entertaining and very kind with her compliments.
OK... So... Ummmmmm... Let's see...
? ?
Well, dang. I can't think of anything to write about.
What was the last exciting thing to happen to me that I haven't already described in detail? Let me think... Well, there was this girl in 8th grade...
Too long ago? Well, not much happens to hermits, you know. :-)
OK, then, what was the last boring thing to happen to me that I haven't already described in detail? Well, there was this... Nah, I couldn't do that to you.
The Truth (not that the above isn't true, too; because it is... mostly)
One of the reasons that you haven't heard from me in a while is because I was in South Dakota for almost two weeks and returned last Friday afternoon (July 8). This time I made the trip to see if I could qualify for a particular job (it will be quite a while before I hear from them). I stayed with relatives for a week and lazed about visiting and talking and visiting -- and drinking too, while talking -- and that was about it. I also collected more old family photographs from one of my aunts to scan into the family history. The last time I was there, she was in the process of moving, so she wasn't able to find all of her photos. After she had finished moving, she found the box that contains the really old photos (some going back to almost 1900 -- one even earlier than that), and I now have them and will soon be scanning them. [Side note: Genealogy is very addictive once you get into it. It requires a lot of detective work (much of it on the internet), which is definitely the fun part. It is fun even when I do it for other people. Some of you might want to give it a try sometime. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.]
After saying good-bye to my relatives, I spent two days in one of my old home towns in central South Dakota visiting an old classmate and his mother (she lives across the street from him -- "Thaaat's right..." :-). Actually, she was sort of a second mother to me for a few months when I was a senior in high school (I'll write about it sometime). It was the first time I had been back there in several years and just missed the town's centennial celebration by one day. Strangely enough, I wasn't in the mood to see anyone else while I was there. This makes me wonder if I have finally lost touch with the "magic" that I used to feel when I lived there, or whenever I visited my friends there in the past. The depressing part is that it didn't depress me to feel that way.
During the final two days of the trip, I stopped in the town here in western Nebraska where I used to work for the school district. A state agency there had purchased a new Macintosh and wanted me to transfer all the files from the old computer (the lady who received the computer is the wife of a teacher who knows me). I thought it would be as easy as it always is, and it was; however, they didn't tell me that it also had to be connected to an ancient network with an ancient server (a server for two computers! talk about overkill). After ten hours of work (requiring an unexpected overnight stay) they are now computing with much greater ease than ever before. I showed them that they could abandon the server completely, as well as a Windows computer that some bureaucrat had mistakenly told them they needed for certain work, but that bureaucrat was completely wrong).
After finally returning home last Friday, I logged onto the internet for a few minutes (I wasn't able to do on a regular basis while visiting my relatives). I was too tired to do very much at that time, though (my car's air conditioning had not worked at all during the entire trip, so I was very, very tired from too much heat). When I tried to log on again later that evening, my internet company had had a malfunction, which they didn't get fixed for three days; therefore, I couldn't even check DiaryLand to see what you people had been up to; nor could I let you know that I had not abandoned you permanently. On Monday, I went to a local non-profit genealogy place (I think I've mentioned it before), where the owner -- a friend -- lets me connect to his wireless network with my PowerBook. Waiting for me was a very nice message from katm6 (mentioned above), in which she informed me that I had been tagged by Clarity25 on July 6. Due my having been away and the internet malfunction at home, I had not known this. Once again, I am amazed. Out of eleventy-hundred people in her favorites, Clarity selected me!
As for my having been tagged with that particular survey: After reading Clarity's and Eric's answers, I am somewhat intimidated. Their answers are excellent and mirror my own in most cases (not the excellent part, just the "gist" part). Eric's comment on patriotism is practically identical to what I would have written, except that he says it so much better and in far fewer words. And to think: He wrote his comments in English! His second language! How can I compare to that?
Now, for that survey:
This isn't the sort of survey at which I normally excel, so I hope you will forgive me if my comments are a bit weak.
1.) Cell phones - I agree completely with Clarity with regard to cell phones; however, I don't want to copy her comments, so I will go in another direction: I got my first cell phone in early 2002. If it had not been for the constant pestering by friends and family who wanted to call me all the time, I would never have done so (then, when I got it, very few of them ever called me). It had been three years since I had last had a telephone of any type. The lack of a phone had been unintentional at first, but then it became incredibly refreshing not to hear that thing ringing all the time (oops, there's some of my hermit tendencies surfacing). I wish I had never gotten it. For the first two years that I had it, it seemed that every call involved bad news. I came to dread hearing the thing ring (even more than I dreaded hearing the regular phone ring back in my "soul mate" days); and I still cringe when I hear that irritating "ring," even though there has been no bad news for quite some time. I just wish someone with whom I would really enjoy visiting would call me sometime.
As for this popular movement to ban people from talking on cell phones in cars, I find that a bit silly. If they ban them, then they should also ban passengers and radios. Just think about it. When a passenger is sitting next to the driver, the driver is not only carrying on a conversation, but he or she is also constantly looking at the passenger during said conversation. Tell me how a cell phone is worse than that. As for radios, how many of us have looked up at the road and wondered how long it had been since we had last paid attention to our driving?
2.) SUV's - Now that gas prices are criminally high, I don't feel even the slightest bit sorry for those people who bought giant vehicles for the shallowest of reasons (or for the mere sake of convenience if they used their kids as an excuse to buy big). They get what they deserve (no offense to any DiaryLanders who bought big ;-). This goes triple for the companies that manufacture these monstrosities (even more so since they've outsourced thousands of jobs to third-world countries). These companies have had ample opportunity in recent years to be mass producing hybrid (gas/electric) vehicles, as well as vehicles that run on other alternative fuels, such as hydrogen (my personal favorite); but they were lazy and greedy and probably in cahoots with the oil companies.
3.) Return to the Eighties - It was in that decade that shallowness, coldness, rudeness [...] became trendy, and it has gotten progressively and dramatically worse since then. In general, though, I don't think of decades in terms of national and international trends or fads. I think of them with regard to my own life and what I would do if I could go back for a "do over." I've been trying for many months to write an entry about a "do over," but it has proven impossible to find the right words.
4.) Patriotism - The following two quotes echo my sentiments for the most part:
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others, because you were born in it." - George Bernard Shaw
"Patriotism. To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography." - George Santayana
There is another very long editorial, which I may post sometime if I can find out if the copyright has expired (it was published in The Ladies Home Journal -- of all places -- in July 1916). It states the idea of true patriotism better than anything I have ever read before.
5.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer - I've only seen bits and pieces of it, but it was more than enough to say, "Yuck!" every time I see it. What more can I say about it? I have always hated horror movies, so why on earth would I want to watch a show about a teenage girl fighting vampires, and other evil demons?
6.) Reality TV - It is an absolute embarrassment to humanity. It exemplifies the shallowness, coldness and rudeness that has become so trendy since the 80s. Sadly, since that crap is so cheap to produce, and people inexplicably like it so much, it won't be going away anytime soon.
