Vintage talk

©MCD

“What’s this?” a little girl with chestnut pigtails inquisitively asked as her gaze fell eye level on a small table with an antique phone displayed on it.

“Well, that is a telephone,” her grandmother explained. “It is what we used to call each other at home before we had mobile phones.”

The young one looked perplexed.

“How?” she asked.

“You would pick up the receiver, place it by your ear and mouth, and then dial the number you wanted to call by using this,” the older woman demonstrated.

The little girl seemed amazed.

“Back then, when you didn’t want to speak to someone, you just told someone else to say you weren’t home. Now, with these phones constantly strapped to our hands, the first thing anyone asks when they call is not if you’re OK, but rather ‘where are you’?”, the woman ranted on a bit.

“Life was simpler then. And quieter too”.

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Wheel for yarn

© Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

It was one of those old houses that still enclose the aroma of another time as if carefully locked inside to transfer you there.

She loved these places. It made her feel like entering a time capsule and travelling back through the ages.

A woman once lived here who knew how to spin wool for yarn. It was a quality skill to possess, and she probably made a living out of it.

Now, many aren’t even able to recognise what this wooden spinning wheel even does.

It’s a dangerous thing to forget our past; it blinds us to our future.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

Generation Gaps

“You know, when we were young, our only way of communicating with each other was if we were both home and both had a landline. Otherwise we were sort of lost in our own worlds”.

The young girl looked up from her mobile phone.

She was astounded by the truth of her grandfather’s words. She lived in an age where you could communicate with anyone anywhere in a matter of seconds. She didn’t know what it was like to not have a phone in hand and for her it was unthinkable to not be able to find out at any given time where anyone was and what they were doing. Mostly because her generation voluntary gave out that information online.

“So what happened if you wanted to find out about someone but didn’t want them to know?” she asked coyly.

“Well, you would have to ask someone who knew them too”.

“But what if you didn’t want anyone to know?”

“Like stalking?” her grandfather put it frankly.

“Well, sort of…” she blushed.

“There was no such thing in my time. If you’re relationship broke with someone, you tried to fix it. And if that didn’t work then you just got out of touch with them. And that was the end of it”.

The girl said nothing. She looked at her grandfather trying to imagine what that was like. Her generation was used to stalking each other on social media and getting obsessed with each other’s posts, overanalyzing, overthinking and overstressing. Everything in exaggeration. What was it like to not have to think about all this? To simply not care? To be calm?

Her grandfather was almost 100. He would still go out for long walks and had the patience of a mule.

She was agitated by even a fly’s buzz.

One time she had asked him if he never worries about anything. His reply was: “would it help?”

“To be calm is the highest achievement of the self” – Zen proverb

The misappreciation of things

There is a saying that you don’t really appreciate what you have until you have it no more. In a post-apocalyptic world we will begin to understand how lucky we are nowadays to be able to do so many things with so little effort – from house chores to work to travel. Yet, we have forgotten the value of everything that truly matters: family, relationships, education.

We don’t have time – we say – to read books. To feed our minds with something of essence, that may change the way we think and the way we view things around us. Ironically, however, we spend the major part of our days skim reading on a screen pointless articles and posts on social media.

We claim we don’t have time – or energy – to visit a museum or an exhibition, something that would increase our value as people, that would give us some cultural education, that would help us realise where we come from so we can improve where we’re going. Yet, we have the time to waste by taking tens of shots in search of the perfect selfie to post on social networks in demonstration of our idyllic lives.

We know nothing yet act as if we know everything.

We stubbornly refuse to learn and, even more, be taught by elders.

We have become a generation of people who want everything and value nothing.

And it is a shame. Because we are the future of this world. And it is not looking too bright.

…And some pasta

There was a supermarket rush this week. Everyone for some reason or the other was hastily grabbing a shopping basket (or cart), stacking it up and then waiting endless minutes in line at the cashier to pack it all away and leave.

But that wasn’t the interesting part.

The most remarkable trait of this whole incident was what everyone was shopping.

And this largely also depended on the age group they were in.

For example, the two twenty somethings who had come in as if they had just emerged from a hippy concert at the beach somewhere, had filled their basket with snacks, beer, chips, biscuits, sausages, and some pasta.

Yet, the elegantly dressed woman in her forties in the next queue preferred to load up on fruit, frozen vegetables, meat, bread and crackers, olive oil, milk, and some pasta.

The much older 97-year old man who grabbed the opportunity offered by the long wait to start a conversation, had instead selected lentils and beans, some fruit, some canned foodstuff, and some pasta.

So what can be deduced by all this? It is all a matter of perspective – and age. It is also interesting to note how you tend to change nutritional values as you grow older. But maybe one thing is for sure: pasta is ever-lasting…

What?

The other day I took the bus down town. At the next stop an old lady grabbed the handle at the door and yelled to the driver if it made a certain stop. After he yelled back to affirm, she – with great difficulty – pulled herself in. There weren’t many people in the bus during that time of day. Two twin girls had taken up two seats in the front of the bus (you know, the ones that are usually assigned to people who need them the most) and their mother was sitting next to them across the aisle. I looked around and the people commuting weren’t really old. At least not as old as this lady.

She was obviously in pain from something. You could see it in her facial expression that she needed to sit down, as she was already panting from the effort to catch the bus and then actually get on it.

She looked around and I observed.

No-one seemed to care.

No-one, not even one person – anyone – even thought of giving up their seat for this woman. (I was standing, so I couldn’t really help).

You could see she was boiling inside, looking at the twin little girls who were carefreely staring out their window, and then their mother who didn’t really seem concerned about anything other than when they would reach their stop.

The women sitting next to the mother then got up to get off at the next stop and the old lady tried to squeeze in to sit in the inner side of the seat as the mother had not budged. The old lady resorted to clearly stating that she wants to sit down because her foot is hurting, and only then did the mother get up to let her sit.

I am left wondering, are there no manners anymore? Savoir-vivre and savoir-faire are obviously non-existent, and the only thing left is the savoir-moi.

We live in a society where everyone only cares about themselves. Where the mentality of “as long as I’m ok, I don’t care about anyone else” reigns. Where giving up your seat for someone who obviously needs it more than you should be a given. But it’s not. (And let’s not even talk about the example the parents give their children…)

Where the words ‘excuse me’ and ‘thank you’ are no longer part of our vocabulary, but instead they have given way to ‘what’, and all the swear words you can imagine.

Rudeness is such a part of our everyday lives that people have stopped paying attention to or being bothered by exactly how….rude it all is.

Walking on the sidewalk and trying to overpass people who are trailing along at snail’s pace, talking on the phone, while at the same time puffing chimney-loads of smoke back at your face. Trying to quickly insert all your shopping in the plastic bags at the end of the counter, so you have time to pay the bill without having to gather remaining items, when the next customer pushes his/her way over to your side and is literally breathing down your neck. Reaching a bus stop and realizing there is a person there taking up the entire bench, having comfortably adjusted themselves in the very middle of the seat with all their belongings on either side. There are numerous more examples of how everyone tries to make everything easier for themselves, without caring how much more difficult things become for everyone else.

There is no ‘we’ in our lives anymore. Only an ‘I’ which comes first.