I'm SO going to sue you for this.
1. Back in the day, you could eat bacon freely. It was the world’s tastiest meat product and we celebrated it, proudly. Now, we have to watch out for nitrates, fat and salt - not to mention the pig’s welfare. Back in the day, bacon didn’t come from an animal. It was just plain bacon and just plain delicious.
2. Back in the day, you could drink during the daytime. Nobody cared. Nobody judged. And we’re not talking a dainty glass of wine over lunch. We’re talking a hefty martini or scotch on the rocks, during your workday, in your office, with clients! No guilty conscience, no drunk driving. Hell, there weren't even hangovers back then. You just drank and smoked cigarettes simply because you could.
3. Back in the day, kids weren’t so important. They sat at separate tables and were told to speak when spoken to. They didn’t wear little t-shirts with Ivy League college names on it. They weren’t taken to private schools and given tennis lessons at 4. They weren’t treated like the second coming, with their photos plastered all over the Internet. They were just kids, with snotty noses and dirty clothes, running around like little wild beasts.
4. Back in the day, you were stuck in a deadbeat relationship for the entirety of your miserable life. You didn’t go to couples counseling or “process” with your “partner.” You didn’t have to endure a painful search for a new mate on Match.com. You put on a good show for the public, wore a constantly strained smile, and cleaned up the broken glass behind closed curtains. But at least the gueswork was taken out of the equation.
5. Back in the day, you didn’t answer your phone. It just rang and rang and you didn’t answer. You didn’t know who it was, so why take the chance? Now you know who’s calling. You know they know you know who’s calling. Sure you can ignore the call, but everyone knows you're ignoring the call.
6. Back in the day, you were just crazy. There was no fancy label for it. You didn’t have bipolar or narcissistic personality disorder or ADHD or borderline. You just did your own thing, as a crazy person. Sure, people talked behind your back, but what did you care? You were too busy arguing with the voices in your head. There was no lengthy discussion with overpriced therapists or medication. Just good old-fashioned lunacy. The public at large was forced to make room for you and your nuttiness.
7. Back in the day, bigotry was out in the open. People spoke of their hate, no matter how ignorant. Sure, it was disturbing but at least it was out in the open. Now, it’s buried under a cloak of political correctness and nobody knows who is really racist. Even the racist people don’t know if they’re really racist anymore.
8. Back in the day, there was no teen pregnancy. Or cancer. People just quietly went away. Sometimes they came back, sometimes they didn’t. If they came back, the problem was magically solved and no questions asked. Skeletons remained happily in closets and no one was the wiser.
9. Back in the day, people beat other people up routinely. Sometimes they did it just for kicks on a drunken Friday night. It usually started with a “Hey, you’re out of line.” And then the fighting would ensue. Now there are lawsuits and hospital expenses and anger management classes dampening our natural urge to occasionally kick some ass.
10. Back in the day, you had personal contact with people. You had to deal with their messy humanness, their bad breath or poor taste in fashion. You had to be around them for prolonged periods of time, where you went from liking them to wanting to kill them to liking them again.
Now, we electronically connect. Sometimes we develop entire relationships with people online, not even knowing if they wear cheap cologne or have hair growing out of their nose. Or have blue specks in seagreen eyes. Or laugh infectiously. Or melt when you whisper in their ears. We call it connection but we still go to sleep, lonely, wanting more. Sigh.
Thanks to Ruby Lawrence for her contributions!
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Lezlie
PFFFFFFFT!
**Amy takes another bite of her BLT with a triple layer of bacon**
@john blu: i *have* one of those phones. how much will you pay for it?
R
~R
People had some capacity for critical thought, and Newscasters reported the news with at least a passing gesture at impartiality.
Back in the day, Republicans and Democrats might rail against one another in Congress, but got along well enough and sometimes hoisted a beer together after work.
I sure miss bacon.
I agree with OE Sheepdog.
-R-
Bacon back then, well we knew it wasn't like a vitamin pill and if you ate to much you'd get fat and if you were fat you'd probably have a heart attack. The operative being YOU, the individual who chose to chow down the greasy, salty, nitrate packed delight. That heart attack was all yours, you ate it you had it and it wasn't the guy who sold you the bacons fault, it wasn't up to the government to tell you to stop eating it and ultimately you were responsible for it and if you got lucky and survived, well you paid the bill for it too. On the other hand people had jobs that didn't dry up and move overseas overnight and employers were accountable for their actions in a lot of ways too. That's all changed now, even if you wanted to be responsible for your own piggy habits and wanted to pay your own hospital bill you can't count on getting a wage that would allow it. I asked my mom how much it cost to have me in the day and she told me about eight hundred dollars and she stayed in the room for three days too. Now if you say hello to an orderly who is standing a half block away to have a smoke the hospital wants to bill you seventeen thousand dollars and if you don't have insurance you will find your tiny shrinking wage garnisheed for it. This makes it impossible to pay your house and car payments. In the day when you had an emergency you called up old Joe or Tom or Frank at the bank and said hey I have an emergency so my payment will be late and he said no problem. Now you do that and there will be two carloads of deputies with five thousand dollars worth of court paperwork taking it all and then everything else in perpetuity.
That phone call that came back then that you wanted to ignore? Well it wasn't exactly that bad, see then there were only a few calls coming in a day and if it was something or someone you didn't want to deal with you could be pretty sure that if it was after business hours it wasn't someone hounding you. Not anymore, now they use auto dialers that call over and over again at just about any time of day or night, hell they even call on Sunday. So to me that caller ID is just my way of leveling the old playing field. I don't give a damn if they do know I'm ignoring them either. Not a situation I miss all that much.
So back in the day, especially now, in hindsight might look better but I think I'll just let society keep right on stacking the deck.
Great post Beth! Can you smell my Hai Karate!? No? that's how it needs to be.
I whole-heartedly agree with #10, and we were better for it.
The only problem with "back in the day" was that you probably didn't write as well as you do now. :)
LOVE #3 and wish like hell it would come back into fashion (yes, I want kid-free airplanes). I still refuse to answer the phone anyway, #5. I miss #6 because now everyone wants to self-diagnose -- crazy is crazy, period. And you are SO correct with #7: "Even the racist people don’t know if they’re really racist anymore." I miss #10 most of all.
XX
At least the common sense things still worth preserving.
Good to see you Beth!!
Nowadays he's be hiring a lawyer.
Two generations from now will people marvel at the unrestrained freedom, anarchy even, of the internet? Will they wonder how we slept-walked into global warming, much as we wonder how the Europeans blundered into WW1? Will they reminisce at how we could move about without a tracking ID chip and get away to places where no one knew our whereabouts?
To a few who may have taken them just a wee too seriously, I hope you understand that this piece was loaded with sarcasm. Of course, I don't think it was that much better back in the day. On some levels, yes.
Wait a second...why am I explaining this? You are all too smart. You know these things, right?
As for caller ID...I have mixed emotions....sure it's good to be warned that a telemarketer wants to interrupt your dinner for the tenth time (same one...) but we also miss that element of surprise when you just pick up the phone and say "Hello?"
Even if your husband beat you black and blue, maybe put you in the hospital a few times and possibly even kill you, he was still better than no husband at all.
B/c you couldn't afford to support yourself and your kids (b/c that's what marriage was for) b/c you never worked in your life b/c you were lucky enough to find "Prince Charming" to take care of you.
Or, you didn't have either the $$ or the opportunitiy of going to college to earn a degree and start a career that would enable you to become self-supporting and not take that shit from anyone.
And God help you if you were a woman of color.
Yeah, I really miss those days...
We climbed trees and rode our bikes with no helmets. We swam in quarries and when we went canoeing, nobody even owned a life jacket. Smoking was really cool and even your doctor recommended Lucky Strikes. Still waiting on bacon flavored cigarettes. Maybe some day.
Dashboards were made of American made steel, people would cut their seatbelts off at the nub and anyone right of center was institutionalized, as it should be.
I especially miss hiding under my desk during those pesky nuke drills. Ah, such fond memories. Great thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Great rant Beth! comments as good as the post, too.
Back in the Day #11, Spam came in a can!