Not Even Not Traveling 65: Hawaii - Diving in Molokini

Our Snorkeling Excursion

It was Christmas Day. The tour owner himself was driving the boat. Apparently, he let a lot of his staff take the holiday off and now he was captain. He seemed to be having fun with it. He punched the throttle. His big, ninety-capacity boat hit the waves like a jet ski. Diane leaned close and told me it reminded her of a kids-only roller coaster she rode as a child in Hershey park.

We noticed whale tail fins to the port (left) side, far away.

Then the boat turned. We gave each other looks of surprise. The vessel spun completely around. This wasn’t supposed to happen. One of the crew approached us.

“We forgot the food,” she whispered. It turned out the captain hadn't waited at the dock for the catered food to arrive. And it was a tour requirement. So he seemed out of practice at being the captain. 

When we got back on the correct course, the owner kicked the engine up another notch. Diane and I stood at the front, bouncing, and watched the ocean and the shorelines. Our ship was turning towards a small island. After a while, a single flying animal popped out of the sea to our left. It glided for a while, not really flapping. Then folded its wings and popped back into the sea.

“Was that a flying fish all alone?” I asked. The alone part was what surprised me most.

“Yes,” said Diane.

We looked for another but never saw one.

In time, our ship slowed and approached a cove on the northwest shore of the island. Another tour group had set anchor in the cove, too. 

Coral Hygiene

"This is a protected marine habitat," the captain warned over the loudspeaker. He started describing the fines we would pay for touching the fish, going ashore on the beach, and a list of other impermissible activities, each of which would result in the sort of fines that would wreck a small country's defense budget. I listened with a smile because I knew, for each rule, someone had decided, "I'll bet I can ride a sea turtle with a horse harness" or something like that and now that’s why we have the rule. People are amazing.

Now, since I have facial hair, I had to use vaseline to get a good mask seal as we suited up. It gave me the dignified appearance of a man who just head-butted a petroleum jelly monster but hey, it did the job. I mean, for the first time in my life, my diving mask didn't leak. In the water, I dove down to test it. (The trick: don't breathe.) Still no leak. We paddled toward what looked like the prime spot. Everything was perfect. I could see fish forty feet down to the bottom. Then thirty, then twenty. We stopped and paddled in circles. 

Now, these first ten minutes were what Diane later described as "bad." She was hyperventilating. Between the cold of the water and the weirdness of breathing through a tube, her body was trying too hard. She was convinced she would never want to go snorkeling again and she was probably composing a one-star review for it, mentally. I experienced something similar. I kept tasting salt water no matter how hard I clamped down on the mouthpiece of my snorkel. As I relaxed and paid attention to the fish beneath me, though, the seal of my lips around the mouthpiece improved. Everything started to feel natural. Breathing was never difficult again, the entire day.

So my first-time snorkeling advice is, give yourself a couple minutes to adjust. We both got comfortable.

After our adjustments, the snorkeling experience was great. We were looking down on a coral reef and a range of fish I've only have seen in aquariums before. They included a few slender, bottle-nosed specimens I'd never seen anywhere. One of them was long and thin and silvery blue. It blended with the seafloor so well, it was difficult to make out. When I pointed it out to Diane, she had a hard time understanding. 

Soon enough, we were pointing out weird fish to each other more or less constantly.

Half an hour later, the captain rang a bell to call us back to the boat. Our next snorkeling site was the stretch of island shoreline informally called "turtle town." 

Swimming with Yertle

When we got in at the turtle site, though, we saw forty feet down to blank, blue nothingness. We maneuvered. We tried to find interesting fish and underwater alcoves. In theory, we were swimming with turtles. But we weren't. We didn't see any. 

Well, not for a long time. Eventually, I noticed a rock moving far away. I realized the rock had flippers. After I watched it move for a while, I went and got Diane. I pointed it out to her in the same manner she and I had used to point out fish before. It took a while for her to see it. After she started tracking the animal, we swam together above it for twenty minutes.

By the end of our dive time, we had gathered a group of five, all tracking the turtle. As I started looking around the ocean bottom a little farther, trying to find more to track, I got separated from the group. Basically, I got lost. I figured that if I found the turtle again, I'd find my group. So I paddled in a big circle until I found a turtle moving pretty far beneath me in the near-dark of the sea. When I looked around, I found no other swimmers nearby. That was weird. I tracked the turtle for a while, convinced the other snorkelers would show up. I kept looking but I never found any people. So I swam away from the turtle, back toward the distant boat. In a minute, I found my group. They were tracking the original turtle, which I had lost. So I must have found a different, smaller turtle. 

I paddled around the larger group for a while. The captain blew the "all back" horn. We clambered aboard, divested ourselves of the diving equipment, and took our seats. The boat bounced. Around me, people ate from the food supplies from the tour buffet.

Hawaii Whale-0

The captain took us to where he had noticed a whale surfacing in the distance. I’m good at spotting whales even in whitecapped seas, or so I assumed after the one time I did it, so I got up when I heard the news. I marched to the prow of the boat to look. At first, I saw nothing important. I know the spout plumes move differently, at least to my sense of motion, than the regular, white, ocean spray. After about a minute, I saw one, a plume twice as tall as the waves. 

I pointed. Everyone around me turned their heads too late. There was nothing for them to see. In a minute, I noticed another plume. I pointed. 

"He probably is seeing them," my wife said in support of my phantom ability. Our fellow passengers weren't sure. They shook their heads. An Australian lady sidled up next to me.

"Are you really seeing them?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I love whale watching," she told me. She described the one other time she had gone to see them on a cruise off the coast near Perth. After six hours, she finally glimpsed one. She'd been thrilled. Now, I thought, we were seeing three sets of plumes. I mentioned it.

"Seems unbelievable." She said it with a smile. Finally, when we got close enough, I pointed and she saw what I saw. She exclaimed, "Oh, it's lovely!"

After they heard her remark, a few other ladies came to join us. Soon the other passengers started to see the plumes, too. They swarmed to the decks of the boat, every corner and cranny. We listened to the captain, clearly a veteran of this sort of event, as he described what we should look for. He said we were pulling up beside a mother and her calf.

I wondered where the third whale had gone. From the timing of the plumes, I was pretty sure I'd seen one, but it had disappeared when the boat drew close. Meanwhile, from the bridge, the captain kept up his narration. He kept saying this was a mother and calf but, if so, the calf was mostly grown. These were both large humpbacks. We kept watching them for ages. They kept surfacing. The Australian lady was thrilled. 

Finally, I remembered my camera. Since it was really my phone, I hadn't been able to take it for pictures of fish or turtles. I could use it now, though. I headed down below decks. Despite the wall of glass windows there with great views of the whales, the space was deserted. Amused, I dug through my bag. 

“A breach!” The captain shouted in surprise.

Whoops. I ran to one of the windows, phone in hand. Sure enough, I saw a whale come down in a terrific splash. It had not done a belly flop so much as a back flop. The huge creature had turned while in the air. A moment later, the second whale rose up.

"Another breach!" yelled the captain. "Two! Very rare!"

We stared as the pair of whales seemed to play. For a minute, they swam near the surface. The ocean roiled.

"Another!" he shouted. Sure enough, the smaller whale leaped out of the water again. It twisted and fell with a mighty, booming splash. 

For a few minutes, the whales settled down to a routine of skimming under the waves and surfacing from time to time, usually together. They were a synchronized swimming team. After I finally took a few photos and videos, I meandered back up to the fore deck.

"Did you see the breaches?" Diane asked. She shielded her eyes from the sun as she turned to me. 

"Oh yeah." I nodded. We pointed at the whales and talked about what we had seen for a few minutes. At last, one of the whales kicked up a tail fin. 

"Uh oh," I mumbled. A moment later, the other whale did the same. 

They were gone. We had spent more than twenty minutes with them, though. And we had been up close. The Australian woman pattered across the deck toward us. Her gestures were wide, her eyes crinkling. She couldn't stop smiling. 
 

Not Even Not Zen 427: Biomythography - Note 138: On Generation X, Part V

On Generation X, Part V

41. AIDS Started an Un-Sexual Revolution

AIDS made for a major difference from the hippie generation. Early in the Generation X college experience, the news services ran stories on herpes transmission. The AIDS crisis was beginning at the same time but no one knew it. Hospitals started to notice a series of mysterious illnesses. After a few years and a lot of suspicions, doctors managed to draw connections between the illnesses. 

Finally, a researcher traced the cause back to a single virus, HIV. Researchers developed a test for HIV. Still, none of this really changed anyone's behavior. The major news organizations treated AIDS with an emotionless sense of remove.

When folks who received blood transfusions started getting AIDS, however, public awareness spiked. Behaviors didn't change but everyone became suspicious of the nation's blood supply. (Regrettably, the news made some people reluctant to give blood.) After a few more years, the World Health Organization started a campaign to raise awareness about AIDS. Eventually, the awareness efforts started to work. Herpes and AIDS hit in the middle of Generation X. If you were on the older side, maybe you got in on a more progressive, forgiving dating culture. If you were on the younger side, though, you might have been scared of sex before you even entered puberty.

42. We Learned Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism promoted the idea that different groups could coexist. It diverged from the melting pot concept in a small but significant way. The melting pot expected us to blend and become roughly the same. The 'salad bowl' approach of multiculturalism expected us to stay different. In it, our American and world sub-cultures could remain distinct while being enjoyed by everyone. That was the idea, anyway.

For me, the movement began with playing cowboys and indians. I know, Gen X childhood came before the official effort to promote multiple cultures. Yet as I was growing up, I noticed with some relief that it was becoming more and more acceptable to play the 'injun' in our pre-adolescent games. Even though the cowboy remained the main hero, the Sioux warrior or Navajo maiden came to be seen as honorable. They got respect. The game changed.

Music came next, I think. Countries that once had been colonized started sending their music back to the colonizers. Fusions took place like ska, afrobeat, and folk punk. Other cultures simply started finding markets in American minds, ears, and hearts for things like Bhangra. In schools, we started to learn literature and history from around the world. 

43. Generation X Grew Up Without Food Delivery 

This seems like an awfully small change. I nearly felt wasn't significant enough to make the list. Still, our generation had a different relationship to food than the ones before or after. Meal delivery, microwave cooking, production monopolies, and distribution systems brought everyone more processed food.

More and more processed. Quicker. Easier. And generally more expensive.

Eating a bag of green beans or boiling some potatoes is still fairly cheap. A lot of Gen X meals from our childhood are affordable although they are not fast. Eating chips from a can is fast but it costs more. Generation X grew up with dinner at home. Most of us had a vegetable, a bit of meat, and a potato on our plate. We were allowed to eat out on special occassions. 

Then came convenience foods. We had TV dinners. We ate fast meals at restaurants. The restaurants themselves got faster and faster. Places started delivering pizzas to our homes. Finally, after the Internet, a flood of deliveries spilled out into the food marketplace. Now there are generations who don't remember when getting a delivery was not an option. There are generations who don't remember cooking without a microwave. 

During my childhood and adolescence, my father spent four or five hours on a Sunday afternoon making spaghetti sauce from scratch. He was right that it was better than anything we can get from a store or from a delivery. It took the whole afternoon, though. It was an era when people devoted more time to cooking and accepted the need to start with raw ingredients. We didn't know it could be different. At the time, it usually couldn't. 

AFTERWORD

There are a few things that certainly qualify as generational differences but I don't consider as defining our generation. 

A. We Learned Cursive

The change in skill doesn't translate to a change in culture. It is cool to be able to read old documents like the Declaration of Independence from a copy of the manuscript. It makes history more personal, more emotionally deep and effective. Still, it doesn't seem significant.

B. We Had Encouragement to Experiment

I'm not convinced this is true. We did have samples of uranium ore in our rock collections. We did have chemistry sets, gunpowder, plywood, and free time. But I'm not convinced parental attitudes (or societal attitudes) were more encouraging. In some ways, they were pretty repressive about free-thinking.

C. We Had the Birth Control Pill

This doesn't make the cut partly because of timing - the pill affected Baby Boomers before Generation X - but also because it did make the cut in this Generation X list, actually. I felt it was a major part of the women's rights movement in the 1970s, so I included it there. 

D. We had Drive-In Movies

Again, this item affected Boomers more. Also, although the American 'car culture' was significant, I think drive-ins were trivial, culturally. 

E. Color Television

This one is timed correctly. But as a generational difference, I don't think color had much effect. I'm willing to listen if anyone thinks they have a convincing argument otherwise.

F. Music Became More Mobile

America progressed from phonographs to LPs, to reel-to-reel, to 8-tracks, to cassette tapes, and to the Walkman and other portable music players. I don't think the technology made for an important societal change, though. In fact, I think it was less significant than putting wheels on luggage.

G. We Remember Luggage Without Wheels

For heaven's sake, it took too long for someone to think of this. But it's still not important. We all have weaker arms and backs, now. (And we probably have fewer injuries.) That's about it.

H. We Remember Blizzards

There are generational differences in weather patterns but they are definitely not universal. They're all local. Changes in snowfall happened for some people in some areas, maybe. But I'm not buying this as a real thing at all, culturally. 

I. Global Warming

Okay, a global warming trend did re-start in the 1970s. Is it any different for Generation X than for other generations? I don't think it is. In fact, you can make a good case it had a bigger effect on Millenials. 

J. Mimeographs

Aside from the various fanzines that got published via mimeographs and early photocopiers, I don't think this type of technology made for a societal effect. Fanzines were cool. There is that. Other generations didn't have that mixed sense of looking up at a magazine rack in a music store and thinking, a) how amatuerish, b) how cool, c) how crazy and determined of someone.

K. Punk

I wanted to include punk music. It defined my tastes and defined some of my friendships. Punk culture departed from hippie attitudes. It began the next generation, musically. But is music by itself enough when we were a "baby bust" compared to the previous generation? Were punk and new wave influential enough? They didn't get the airplay of early rock and roll in the 1960s.

If punk is influential enough, reggae could be, too. And ska, death metal, the 1990s country music revival, grunge, Dr. Demento, and Eric Idle singing "Always Look on the Bright Side." Maybe together, they are. Maybe.

L. We Saw Horror Movies

The gore movies, not the Hitchcock-style films, coincided with our generation. They got popular, so I guess we watched them. Did they make a difference? I don't think so. 

M. We Played Dungeons and Dragons

We learned to play games that were not like bridge, spades, hearts, or canasta. D&D did not pit two players against each other like in chess. It didn't even pit a half-dozen players against each other like in Risk or Diplomacy. D&D let people form teams. It allowed game play without a defined goal.

You made your own goals. And that's something. 

For punk music and D&D, I'm willing to listen if anyone thinks they have a convincing argument they defined Generation X.
 

Not Even Not Zen 426: Biomythography - Note 137: On Generation X, Part IV

Generation X, Part IV

I'm surprised to find so many factors making differences between generations. Understanding them may be a futile pursuit, as my instincts inclined me to believe before I began. Assembling a list of differences, though, highlights how much has changed in America. 

Some of the items in this list are worth books of their own but my reasons for including them are generally cut to a paragraph each. I'm trying to put these elements in roughly chronological order, too. That means I haven't even mentioned the Internet so far. I think I could get to it this time.

31. First, We Were Baby Busters

One day when I was around ten, I reported to work at my childless neighbors, the Vances. I had agreed to do gardening assistance Vance at the rate of one dollar per hour. A magazine, possibly Scientific American, had come out with an issue that declared the end of the Baby Boom generation. It charted birth rates in the United States since World War II. Virginia Vance had been reading the article. She had it in her hand when she answered the door. She flipped open the pages, creased the back, and showed me the chart.

"You're a Baby Buster," she said.

“What’s that?” I hadn’t even broken anything yet.

“It’s what they’re calling you.”

She explained. During World War II, childbirth rates fell. Then men returned from their deployments, couples met and married, and they started families. Birth rates climbed from around 20 per thousand people in 1945 to around 25 per thousand in 1955. Now they had declined to 19 per thousand. I had been born in the decline. Hence, my generation was assigned the name Baby Busters.

Years later, as newspapers and magazines backed away from the term Baby Busters and flailed around for another term like "MTV Generation," "Computer Generation," "Slackers," or "Grunge Generation" the whole concept came to feel fabricated, like something media companies just made up. Only the media seemed to care about it. When they seemed to settle, eventually, on "Generation X," their choice felt like they'd given up. Going with "X" was admitting, essentially, they couldn't think of a name. 

There isn’t one thing that defines Generation X. That’s probably the reason for the naming problem. Instead, as generations do, we endured a collection of changes.

32. We Hung Out at the Mall

After American city downtowns started dying, malls sprang up in their place. Obviously, Generation X couldn't hang out at the soda fountain on Main Street. We could meet at the record store in the mall, though. So we did. The mall was our downtown. 

This aspect of life seems almost embarrassing because meeting spaces don’t seem important. But they are. Malls were not just retail markets. Even now, when a commercial construction firm designs a mall (a rare event these days), they spend time considering how people will meet and relax within the spaces. The point of the designers is to encourage purchases at the shops but that means they want to create a general friendliness for the area. People being social is a societal interest; but it's also a commercial one, especially in America.

33. The Sun Stopped Being Everyone’s Best Friend

As we were growing up, we knew folks who practically worshipped the sun. Maybe we were those folks. 

People tried to tan. They slathered on baby oil. If they lived in the north, they wanted better vitamin D. There were state-sponsored vitamin D health campaigns. For two decades, we nuzzled up to the sunlight. Then the news about the ozone hole came in. We had already started getting unexpected burns. Sunscreen had started to appear on store shelves. 

We found out what chlorofluorocarbons were. We educated ourselves on ozone. It was a strange idea to most of us that we needed to protect ourselves from the sun. What about our vitamin D? 

The ozone layer is partially repaired now, or so atmospheric scientists say, but it likely will never be fixed completely.

34. Enshittification Picked Up Its Pace

This trend has gone by other names. In the 1950s, construction companies learned to use sub-standard materials. If you look at the attic of a 1920s house in Maryland you'll see six by six cedar joists and beams. Cedar resists rot and it's strong. It's stronger than necessary, in fact. A house builder doesn't want a house to last a hundred years; they need it to last a few years past the sale. Ideally, the building shouldn't fall down in an earthquake, as well. 

American companies modeled their businesses on corner-cutting during manufacturing and planned obsolescence. Appliances should break in a few years; that's the basic model. Printer cartridges follow the model. Blenders, too. Washing machines. Plus, companies bought into cutting quality along with costs. We deregulated airlines to make flights cheaper and worse - as bad as people could tolerate. Commercials increased their bite of our time. By the 2000s, commercial breaks that were once 8-10 minutes per hour expanded to 15-20 minutes. Food ingredients cheapened, led by fast food chains. Meat quality decreased. Fillers increased. Shrinkflation began. 

Social media shifted from chronological feeds showing what you wanted to see into engagement-maximizing algorithms prioritizing outrage and ads. Software companies shifted from selling software their customers owned into mandatory subscriptions that removed features from cheaper tiers and forced continuous payments for the functionality we all once purchased outright.

35. Unions Faded Away

As we were growing up, American companies moved manufacturing overseas. The move had supply chain repercussions affecting the shape of the world economy. The first consequence was a crippling of American unions.

Unions fought for living wages and basic benefits like healthcare. As their negotiating leverage diminished, Generation X saw the loss of small tokens of workplace respect, usually enshrined in office conditions. Jobs stopped keeping bank schedules and started demanding more free overtime. Workers lost paid lunch hours, then lost paid lunch half-hours, and finally lost smoke breaks. In some cases, the Boomer generation of workers kept their benefits while excluding Generation X and later hires.

We lost our pensions. In fact, we lost the idea of pensions. Companies moved pension funds into stock-based retirement funds. Corporations went from giving some loyalty and expecting strict loyalty in return to saying aloud, “anyone who believes in loyalty is a sucker.” We increased our productivity many times over without the rewards seen in previous generations.

36. Unmentionable Things Became Mentionable

I’m not sure when this took place. Somehow, we transitioned from not talking about poop, pee, sex, medical procedures, death, or the reasoning behind adult decisions (“because I told you”) and we started - this seems entirely due to us making a series of conscious decisions- talking about them. 

We mentioned the unmentionable. We said the word “cancer.” I’m not sure if all the extra talk is good. American Indian men saw talking too much as a sign of thoughtlessness. That view is part of the stoic tradition, too. We had something nice going in our culture with honorable deeds being done quietly and good behavior being taken for granted. We decided to speak more anyway, to make things clear for people who missed nonverbal signals or pretended to miss them. Maybe we will find a balance that gets the advantages of clarity with the comfort of appropriate silence. We don’t seem to be finished with this yet, if such things are ever finished. 

37. We Lost Some Repair Skills 

Every generation loses some. We probably haven’t had good plasterers in this country since the invention of sheet rock. This time we lost abilities related to the wires and tubes in electronics.

The technological revolution brought on by solid state electronics generated devices that were harder to fix. When transistors got carved into the wafers of computer chips, we lost the chance to repair circuits. With the logic of wires and tubes embedded in circuit boards, the best we could do is swap the boards. 

Nowadays with the Right to Repair, Maker Faire and other consumer-rights movements, we may be seeing a return to repair skills but, for a while, we had a generational failure to learn them. Our parents replaced diode tubes in the television. Their skills became irrelevant. Our uncles rewired the copper coil in radios. That trick doesn't apply to modern radios. Maybe even radios no longer apply. We swapped computer components for a while, as a way of repair, but we no longer do even that, very much. 

38. We Made Personal Computers, BBSes, FidoNet, and Internet

Transistors allowed computers to scale down from the size of ENIAC room-fillers to mainframes, then to minicomputers, and eventually to microcomputers, which we usually call personal computers, laptops, desktops, or phones. 

Boomers started the personal computer revolution but Generation X got heavily involved around the time bulletin board systems (BBSes) came around. We played on FidoNet (an early form of cross-country communication by telephone lines), and next the Internet (Usenet, FTP, and Telnet at first but soon the World Wide Web).

The timing of these things meant boomers controlled the underlying infrastructure but Generation X technicians provided the new Internet based services. It’s hard to describe how much this changed daily life; and maybe it’s not necessary. Although this group of technologies defined our generation in many respects, the revolution didn't come during our formative years. We didn't grow up with the Internet. Some of us created it. The rest of it eased into it. 

We all renewed contact with some people who we lost track of after college, high school, or earlier, because we'd made a world where lifelong contact is possible without living in the same small village. 

39. We Were the Last Generation of Newspaper Readers

We grew up with news segregated into topics and accompanied by the Sunday funnies. Sometimes we read articles six pages long. Sometimes they revealed how an aspect of society, say, the children’s court system, worked. 

The publishers and editors were gatekeepers. They affected our basic expectations of the world. But there were laws protecting the diversity of views and ensuring news competition. Our court system violated those principles of competition. Now the presence of monopolies in the market has helped create the sameness of, and the click-bait nature of, the materials we read. 

40. We Were the Last Generation Dependent on Libraries

Libraries are still around. They still assist with research and still act as community meeting spaces. Two of my local town groups meet in the closest library to us. Nevertheless, we've endured amazing differences since the times when libraries hit their peak, maybe in the 1930s. Now we have reference information available through our phones. We've got fairly definitive answers available to us essentially at all times.

We no longer have to rely on the hazy memory of our relatives. We don't have to suspect our uncle just made up an answer. We can ask our phones and find out, well, darn, he was right this time. But look, he was wrong about the previous six things he said. 

In our formative years, sometimes we waited decades for the same revelation.
 

Not Even Not Zen 425: Biomythography - Note 136: On Generation X, Part III

Generation X, Part III

21. Gambling was illegal

"It's just immoral," was a phrase I heard a lot, growing up, about gambling. Legislatures had made nearly every form of gambling illegal because it was so obviously bad. Casinos, for instance, were designed to take money and give nothing in return. Of course they were against the law. Was your neighbor running a lottery? Well, it had ridiculous odds of hundreds to one, so it was also made illegal. Poker games with buddies? Well, playing for chips was okay but you couldn't play for money. That was the moral stance.

Horse racing? Well, it was legal. The inconsistency made adults frown. The stock market? It was also legalized and also frowned upon. Remember the Great Depression? Betting on stocks was immoral even when it was legal, and its immorality had consequences. After the stock crash of 1973, I heard many people say betting on stocks should be illegal.

The proponents of gambling said the moralists were simply being 'puritan,' that a little gambling fun never hurt anyone, and anyway the stock market was doing well again. New Hampshire started a lottery based on horse racing (to make everyone feel nothing much was changing, I suppose). Other states followed, many of them giving even worse odds and with no ties to horse racing. The state governments didn't offer odds of merely hundreds to one but thousands or millions to one. They promised more money for programs people wanted (like senior living homes and neighborhood schools) and the result was what our friends called 'math taxes' - that is, fees imposed on people who couldn't do math and hence played those lotteries.

22. Underage Drinking Started Getting Enforced

In the generations previous to ours, drinking while underage was normal. During Generation X, police started to enforce the laws more. A social movement against liquor got revitalized by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), which won quick success and received a parody movement in opposition, Drunks Against Mad Mothers (DAMM). But MADD was not kidding. Their members had lost children to something they felt was preventable. They kept at it. They succeeded in, among other things, raising the drinking age.

As a result, some members of Generation X could drink legally at 18, some at 20, and some at 21. Some folks (like me) got grandfathered in by our home state. Some did not. One of my college friends turned legal at 18, then illegal, then legal at 20, then illegal, then legal again at 21. People had to stop framing the issue in terms of morality because the community morals were so inconsistent. Instead, they discussed drunk driving and road safety. Those issues seemed to win the debate.

Enforcement lagged behind the laws, though, I was able to buy beer and wine when I was 15 years old. No one asked me for identification. By the time I was twenty every place asked for ID.

To be fair, lots of people had been driving drunk, many more than I usually see mentioned. There seems to be some revisionism going on. In a discussion nowadays, a person or two may reluctantly concede that folks drove drunk back when Generation X was growing up. If you ask for specifics, though, hardly anyone admits to driving drunk themselves.

23. Women's Liberation Hit During our Formative Years

I'm going to start off with an achievement that never gets mentioned: mental freedom. Women gained the ability to realize they were not broken or psychopathic. People seem too embarrassed to mention it. In retrospect, it seems too unbelievable to discuss, as well.

In 1973, Trident Press published a book called My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday. At the time, the medical profession treated female sexual fantasies as a sickness. Women could be involuntarily committed to treatment if they admitted to having them. After the fantasies were compiled systematically for discussion, though, psychologists started to back off their preconception of them as abnormal.

My Secret Garden gets sneered at even now. But the book was groundbreaking. It contributed to broader 1970s conversations about female sexuality and helped destigmatize women's sexual thoughts and desires. A lot of people apparently don't count that as any kind of freedom. I disagree because I consider it vital to have real freedom of mind.

More conventionally, our generation got the benefit of sex discrimination getting banned in education. We grew up with girls and boys getting equal(ish) opportunities to take classes and play sports. We benefited from the legalization of abortion, too, and increased access to contraception, which gave women control over their bodies. (These also led to a huge reduction in violent crime starting about fifteen years later.) We had the Equal Pay Act. In 1974, we got the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which enabled women to obtain credit cards and loans without a male co-signer. In 1978, we got the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which made it illegal to fire or discriminate against pregnant workers. We got the first battered women's shelters and the first treatment of domestic violence as a systemic issue, not just as a personal one. In short, the United States changed in fundamental ways. Generation X was the first to grow up with the changes.

24. We Were the First Generation Encouraged to Incur Debt

In previous generations, people often didn't carry any debts - because they couldn't.

Loans weren't available to most people except as layaway programs in department stores. Many women couldn't acquire debts at all in their own name. People of color faced similar challenges. Poor white men with the wrong types of job couldn't get loans. On top of everything else that restricted credit, many religions opposed interest charges as usury. When banks eased credit guidance and raised credit card rates, those churches initially tried to shut down MasterCard and Visa. They seem awfully quiet about usury nowadays.

I got my first credit card at J.C. Penny, a store card, when I was fifteen. I had a job, so I was eligible. I got a free plastic cup and pitcher set with my application, too. Two years later, I got my first government-backed loan for college. The terms of my college loans came at a reasonable discount compared to modern loans. When a typical mortgage interest rate was 17%, I paid 8% for college because the government guaranteed it for me. Now, when the mortgage rate is 4%, a student loan is still 8% and that's no longer a good deal.

25. We Had Student Smoking Sections

It's amazing how openly the country surrendered on the subject of child health. Tobacco companies had been fighting for decades to keep people smoking despite the consistent negative results of science research on lung cancer. They had been winning the public battle, too. Of course, we have similar fights going on today over microplastics, pesticides, glyphosates, PFAs, and more. The companies responsible will win for a long time. I don't know if we'll have the equivalent of student smoking sections in public schools on any of those issues, though.

I'm not even certain how official our student smoking sections were. I've never read a book of school rules. What I know is we had outdoor areas the teachers told us were for "only students to smoke." I bought cigarettes so I could go hang out there, where the hardcore smokers, some of them pretty girls, talked endlessly about how terrible a habit it was.

26. We Had Leaded Gasoline

This is a contender for crime of the century, even in a century filled with crime.

In 1921, an engineer for General Motors named Thomas Midgley discovered a compound called “tetraethyl lead” that stopped car engines from shuddering. Midgley led a conglomerate, the Ethyl Corporation, to make leaded gasoline. Cars and generators used his new formula, which caused catastrophic damage to the environment. As one of the effects, our nation saw a widespread cognitive decline. Childhood lead exposure impaired the development of our brains. We got an increase in cardiovascular disease and kidney failures from the lead. Higher exposures gave us elevated rates of psychiatric issues, including depression, anxiety, and neuroticism. In the 1970s, after legal wrangling, we started phasing out leaded gasoline in the United States. In 1996, we banned it outright.

The results of the toxic lead are persistent. It lingers in the atmosphere, so we still breathe it. It's in our dust, soil, and water and it always will be there. We will always be dumber and more neurotic than previous generations. We will always pay higher health care costs due to the lead.

27. We Carried Pocket Knives

At the age of ten, I was, at last, allowed to carry. I had won a Boy Scout pocket knife in a contest. It had a can opener, a blade, a corkscrew (so useful for ten year olds!), an awl, a second blade, and a flathead screwdriver. I carried it everywhere I could for the summer. No marshmallow stick was safe from whittling.

The tool knives were emblematic of a level of trust and responsibility. We absorbed the cultural rules: don't pull it out in a fistfight because it's more honorable to lose the fistfight; no threatening anyone; don't whittle toward your body; don't complain when you whittle toward yourself and get cut; don't unscrew the door jamb just to screw it back in; do unscrew the outlet plate to impress your friend but then, for heaven's sake, put it back.

We had BB guns. We had air pellet guns. We had rolls of gunpowder caps. We had fireworks. We had chemistry sets. Some older teens had hunting guns in their room. A lot of these things went to school. It didn't matter, usually. Because we were trusted.

28. Life Expectancy Was 20 Years Less Than Most of Us Got

“Men live to sixty two,” my science teacher told me in fourth grade. “Women get to sixty-seven. But of course those are only averages.”

“Why do women live longer than men?” I complained.

“I think no one knows.”

In fact the life expectancy calculations kept growing as we aged. Now we have life expectancies of 76 for men and 81 for women. We know more about what those numbers mean, too. We understand the averages are not only a measure of improved cancer treatments (remission for 20 years instead of none) but all other health improvements. We know that testosterone looks implicated in men dying a little earlier. Still, our generation grew up with the expectation that half of us would be dead by now. And it's not as bad as that. Our lingering in this world affects Social Security calculations. It affects decisions about retirement, bucket lists, healthcare, hospice care, and spiritual life in general.

Gen X has more chronic illnesses (like hypertension and diabetes) than the Boomers; we are currently the sandwich generation caring for parents and children both; and we suffer unexpected financial strain from the caring, too.

29. Unions Faded

As we were growing up, American companies moved manufacturing jobs overseas. The move had supply chain consequences affecting the shape of the world economy. The first consequence, though, was a crippling of American unions.

Unions fought for living wages and basic benefits like healthcare. As their negotiating leverage diminished, Generation X saw the loss of small tokens of workplace respect, usually enshrined in better office conditions. Jobs stopped keeping bank schedules. Workers lost paid lunch hours, then lost paid lunch half-hours, and finally lost smoke breaks. In some cases, the Boomer generation of workers kept the benefits while excluding Generation X and other, later hires.

We lost our pensions. In fact, we lost the idea of pensions. Companies moved pension funds into stock-based retirement funds. Corporations went from giving some loyalty and expecting strict loyalty in return to saying aloud, “anyone who believes in loyalty is a sucker.” We increased our productivity many times over but without the rewards seen in previous generations.

30. Healthcare Turned from a Non-Profit Service to a Profit-Making One

One of the worst consequences of this transition was complexity. I know it doesn't get mentioned often but the difficulty of figuring out what your insurance will cover while you're ill or dying is not trivial. Yes, the current system results in huge overhead costs, the largest in the world. It produces weird gaps in insurance coverage. Our system prizes efficiency in service delivery (not billing) over effectiveness. However, what we want most while ill is an effective treatment. But I think complexity is a real killer, sometimes literally.

Lack of transparency is perhaps the next-worst thing. We don't get to read Consumer Reports about the success rates of hospitals, surgeons, specialists, or nursing units. We don't know where the value is for our money and therefore we can't really make cost competition or quality improvements happen.

On the plus side, the American system results in profitable hospitals and good pay for doctors. Those aren't insignificant things. A few countries around the world experience doctor shortages more or less constantly because they don't pay enough to keep them.

Not Even Not Zen 424: Biomythography - Note 135: On Generation X, Part II

Generation X, Part II

11. We were a generation without serious childhood diseases

I had teachers who were partly crippled by polio. Others bore pock marks or scars from past diseases. Those were fairly rare to see but all the older adults I knew saw their friends and family members die around them or dealt with them partly crippled by disease. The younger adults and I did not.

12. We saw vast improvements in dentistry

My grandfather had all his teeth knocked out before he was thirty-five. My father had less than half of his removed. I’ve had only my wisdom teeth taken out. Over three generations, that's pretty good progress.

Once, tooth removal was the standard of care. Then dentists learned to do root canals. They figured out pain management, too. I experienced my first dentistry under the influence of laughing gas. By the time I was eleven, my dentist replaced it with novacaine. By the time I was twenty-four, I got topical novacaine, too.

Braces improved. Once, only the upper classes could get them. Then various stages of the middle class could afford to straighten their teeth. Now we have expanders to wear instead of knocking out teeth. And we have plastic, 'invisible' braces.

13. Some of us got contact lenses

This is one I wouldn’t have noticed myself. In ages past, someone like me would have wondered why a few others were so bad at fighting or sports. Even in more recent generations, sufferers from poor eyesight had to wear glasses. Everyone could see that you couldn't see.

When our generation reached its teen years, contact lenses became available. They made a difference, socially. They still do. In time, if U.S. insurance companies permit it, corrective surgery could replace contact lenses but we are still in a contact lens era.

14. The Cold War defined our expectations and its end confused us

We read popular books about nuclear armaggedon, prepared for atomic attacks, saw movies starring radioactive creatures, and listened to commentators describe the end of life on earth, which was more or less a weekly feature. Families built backyard fallout shelters. The church hosting my scout meetings had their own fallout shelter. Thanks to the Space Race, I learned binary, octal, and hexadecimal math. Children absorbed the stories about sudden annihilation, fighting the commies with lasers, and fighting atomic bomb survivors with rocks. We assumed the existential threat as background noise to our normal childhoods of playing outside, watching television, and going to school.

When leaders declared the Cold War over, it didn't seem believable. After all, the Cold War had justified our formative life decisions. As it turned out, I'd say we were right to be skeptical.

15. We Grew Up Assigned to Tribes

When Generation X was young, we found ourselves assigned to the European tribal labels or to the labels 'African," 'Asian,' or 'Indian,' each treated as a tribe even though the designations didn't make sense. I was assigned to the 'Irish' tribe because of my last name but, like most Americans, I was descended so thoroughly from a mix of everything European (and a little native American), it wouldn't have made sense to assign me Irish even if I'd grown up in Ireland.

As I child, I realized lumping the Chinese and the Japanese together as one label, when they were so different and very often still hated each other, made no sense. It didn't even attempt to make sense. The same went for Indians like the Hopi and Navajo, traditional enemies, or the Lakota and Pawnee. In fact, the term Indian was inaccurate on so many levels, it was weird to have a friend called an Injun in school. But he called himself an Injun, too. And I called myself Irish.

The way these old designations got replaced by newer dividing lines has given me (and perhaps many others in Generation X) a sense of them being arbitrary.

16. We had superstitions

It's hard to describe how pervasive they were. My uncles described the ghosts in their houses. Grown men in the neighborhood dodged black cats. Women inspected dropped items for omens. Seances were forbidden but popular. Tarot cards got banned. Neighbors put up horseshoes over their doors. Friends bought key chains with rabbit's feet at the end. People believed in luck. They believed in it deeply.

We had no easy way to test our superstitions. They ruled a noticeable sliver of society. I think it may have been all the Space Race education and the tireless work of people like Harry Houdini that brought our superstitions under control.

17. We had insects

Nowadays if you drive anywhere on the east coast, your windshield is clear at the end of your journey. 

That wasn't how my mother drove when I was growing up in Maryland. She hit dozens of bugs every trip. Thousands of them, large and small, died on our windshields every year. Then, one year, she noticed we had been hitting fewer bugs. We had been hitting fewer each year for several years, in fact. 

Finally, we stopped hitting them at all. 

18. We had birds

We had flocks of birds crossing the sky, end to end. I haven't seen flocks as large as those in a long time. You can't have flocks of thousands without food to feed them. The food has to include insects. Now we don't have enough insects. Even if the insecticides hadn't killed millions of birds directly, millions would have died anyway once we lost their food source.

19. We had broadcast television

Broadcast television used (and still uses, but on different bandwidth) radio signals to encode audio and video information. When broadcasts were introduced, coupled with the rasterization in cathode ray tube screens that let us see images, they constituted a form of magic. The television antennas picked up the radio signals, the television hardware decoded them, and we saw whatever shows the local broadcast towers were sending. 

"It's on! It's on!" Our parents would yell. And we came running back from the kitchen whenever we heard the call. We were captive to the timing of those broadcasts.

In my area, we got NBC, ABC, CBS, and an independent station on the standard VHF bands. With a switch on our set, we could move to the UHF bands and decode three stations there, as well. Those include an independent broadcast and two PBS stations. During our lifetimes, satellite television and cable television eventually grew into competitors for broadcasts. For our formative years, though, we saw only broadcast TV.

20. We obtained consumer freedom with videotapes

Plenty of people made video recordings of family birthdays and other, personal events. More, though, recorded shows from broadcast TV. Now VCRs gave them the ability to could build show collections. They could binge-watch the shows on their own schedule. They could fast-forward through the commercials, too. Naturally, the television business hated it. 

By law in the United States, videotapes and cassette tapes had to be sold with a fee included to compensate the authors and other copyright holders. The legislators assumed we would be making a copy not otherwise detectable but still covered by copyright law. It was, in their opinion, a special case and not fair use. Other countries enacted similar laws. They allowed creators to make some money based on societal assumptions. Videotape users hardly noticed since the fees were built into the cost of the tapes.

Later, though, the Supreme Court ruled that private tapes were fair use. This effectively eliminated the U.S. based video levies. 

I've never liked the consequences of removing the levies. They were a useful, civil arrangement. Now we have some people who (rightly) feel they should be able to buy something once and own it. What they do with it afterwards, such as copying it to a cassette, is their own business. We also have creators and copyright holders feeling (rightly, again) that people will misuse the ability to make copies. We could have a societal understanding about how to behave - but we have given up having even the hope of one, it seems.
 

Not Even Not Zen 423: Biomythography - Note 134: On Generation X, Part I

On Generation X, Part I

The defining trait of America's Generation X might be the presence of latchkey kids. Immediately preceding the early 1960s, a generation of mothers stayed home. During Generation X, in contrast, many mothers chose to work in offices. Of course, kids had always been a bit 'free range' in times before. Since the end of child labor, parents had told their children to play outside and not come back until dinner. But Generation X was more free than ever. Mothers no longer patrolled their homes or neighborhoods. Professional daycares had not sprung up. Kids had keys to their houses and the freedom (and responsibility) to care for themselves and their friends.

Normally, I don't see meaningful distinctions between generations. That is, I wouldn't try to single out the times in which people grow up any more than their religions or educational levels or economic situations. Those make some sense to talk about, though. Maybe it's worth thinking about whether there genuinely are lessons to learn from our times and places of origin. Occasionally, we might notice something quite serious to a generational difference, such as the Vietnam War, the killings at Kent State, the presence of latchkey children, or the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Here, in roughly a linear order, are factors I think might define Generation X. I would love to hear different opinions.

1. We raised ourselves as free range kids

As mentioned above, we went outside wandering, drinking through hoses, and meeting strangers in person. Getting lost and finding our way back were factors of our daily lives. Negotiating with other kids to play games was a regular occurrence.

2. We benefited from a civil rights movement

When I was young, grown-ups in the neighborhood got angry about mixed marriages. To them, that meant between Irish (low white) and Italian (colored). The adults stood in groups, berating those unions and the Catholic churches that permitted them. Once, a blonde woman said, "What about the Lovings?" meaning the couple in Virginia. The rest of the group laughed. A man replied, "That's not really a thing." They didn't consider the civil rights movement to be practical.

But they were wrong. It took too long to prove, but it turned out that treating people with equal dignity and equal rights under the law is, in fact, practical.

3. We witnessed assassinations

For sixty years between the killings of Presidents McKinley and Kennedy, Americans didn’t seem to think about eliminating political leaders. Suddenly, after Kennedy, guns became everyone’s solution to differences of opinion. Someone killed Malcolm X. They got the younger Kennedy. Then Martin Luther King. Someone crippled George Wallace. People kept on trying. They wounded Andy Warhol. They murdered Barbara Colby.

Sometimes, as with the plots against Ford, Carter, and Reagan, the shooters didn’t even seem motivated by politics. They simply had easy access to guns and to famous people. Next, a man shot John Lennon. It wasn’t social commentary. It wasn’t personal. Shootings became a form of expression for frustrated people.

4. We grew up naked or nearly so

This one, more than most, probably depends on local circumstances.

In my childhood, we wore very little during the summer. Running around nude was considered normal for babies. Some of us grew up partly in summer camp barracks. We got naked in locker rooms. These thing gave us a different attitude towards our bodies. They gave us a different concept of nudity, too, which wasn’t sexualized. I don’t know for sure if it was healthier or not but I suspect it was.

5. We learned through corporal punishment

While some aspects of society re-started with Generation X, like civil rights and assassinations, some ended with our generation, like being free range kids and receiving corporal punishment.

Beating children had been the main way parents modified behavior for millions of years. When my wife wanted us to join the generational trend of seeking alternatives to spankings, I felt we were taking a risk. And we were. It seemed to pay off. There may be unintended consequences yet from failing to be physical. Raising immoral children doesn't seem to be one of them, though. Our grown kids have good consciences despite a lack of corporal punishment.

6. We made our own meals

They were terrible meals. We made ketchup and cheese sandwiches. We gnawed on warm, mushy apples. We pocketed tangerines and peeled them later, on the playground. Everyone relied on peanut butter and jelly, even the kids who weren’t allowed to spoil their dinner.

I ate hard peaches and crabapples from neighborhood trees. (I threw up, once. You can only eat so many crabapples.) But although most of us didn’t learn much about cooking, we did learn a form of food self-reliance early. There's something to be said for eating plain foods, too. Lots of us were used to doing it.

7. We drew maps

This was a ‘free range’ skill, I suspect. We memorized paths and landmarks. We learned to follow the stream. We buried pirate treasures consisting of our old stuffed animals and cap guns. Then we located the X on our homemade treasure map and dug them up again.

We could glance to the sun and judge our cardinal direction. We knew our mealtimes without a watch. Sometimes we read paper maps. But always, even without them, we found our way home. We found our way around our houses in the dark, too. We hardly thought about it.

8. We didn’t use our safety belts

By the time I was in college, I made a habit of stopping at every car accident I saw to try to help. At an accident in Massachusetts, I met a panicked man marching the other way on the darkened shoulder of the road.

“She’s hanging upside down!” He pointed behind him. I thought he may have been the first bystander on the scene. “I don’t see how we can get her out.”

As I continued, I approached a turned-over sedan. It was resting with its roof on the grass between a guard rail and a strand of trees. Inside, I could see a woman looking anxious. I didn’t see how she could have done this to her car but I didn’t think much more about it, either. Obviously, she had made it happen somehow. I saved most of my amazement for the seatbelt.

It was bewildering that she'd worn one. No one ever did. For Generation X, it wasn't an option in the older cars when we were children. Seat belts came with new models, of course, but no one used them. They weren’t available yet in school buses or public transit. Yet here was a woman who had worn hers and she was lucky, maybe, that she did. She hadn't been thrown when her car turned over. After I talked with her, I realized she was feeling sick from hanging upside down. So there were problems with the system. Still, she decided not to try to get out of the belt until the emergency crew arrived to give us advice.

9. We were the second generation who didn't know where our food was coming from

We mostly didn’t grow up with local butcher shops, vegetable gardens, bakers, fish vendors, fruit stalls, or local specialty stores. They were all fading, economically. Instead, supermarkets popped up to replace them. The supermarkets effectively moved all the little vendors inside and gave them a big, protected place to partially exist.

Thanks to newish methods of freezing and canning, we didn’t have to worry so much about what was in season, either. Instead of meat or vegetables produced locally, we got perishable items from farther away. True, the food we ate got worse and worse. But it happened slowly. We hardly noticed. When we did, not enough of us cared. Perhaps in a few cases, we did care enough (for instance, I heard twenty-five years of complaints about tomatoes), but we discovered we had no power to change the system. Too many people were too willing to buy apples or tomatoes that looked good, even though they tasted terrible. And so our system produced more and more items that looked good but nutritionally and gastronomically were just colored cardboard.

10. Slowly, our rivers stopped catching fire

When I roamed the forests as a seven year old, I came across old tires, broken barrels, washing machines, smashed beer bottles, and abandoned cars. Sometimes I played in the abandoned cars. I found plenty of big trash in Piney Branch Creek. By the time I was eleven, grown-ups had cleaned up the creek. They made the open containers of chemicals disappear. They reduced the open sewage, too.

The Clean Water Act of 1972 regulated industrial pollution and water processing. People took it seriously. It was the law. Besides, we wanted to breathe. We scrubbed industrial smokestacks to clear the air. Governments stopped dumping radioactive waste into oceans and bays. Our cities sent men to gather up the old appliances left in our parks. They even hauled away some of the abandoned cars. We lived our childhoods during this turning point.

Not Even Not Zen 422: Biomythography - Note 133: Superstitions, Part I

Superstitions, Part I

When I was young, adults took their superstitions seriously - even when they said they didn't. Grown men froze when they saw a black cat. They told me they wouldn't cross paths with one even if it meant taking the long way around to where they were going. I don't think anyone does this nowadays but, as a child, I saw it done.

Sometimes my friends' mother would insist I throw a pinch of salt over my left shoulder when I spilled at the table. My friends, when we were looking up at the stars at night, wished upon falling stars with hope for their wishes being granted. We wished again when blowing out our birthday candles.

Men and women looked for omens in the gathering of birds. Adults feared crows so much they would walk away from a gathering of them. Others would exclaim, "Good luck" as they were hiking by my yard, stoop low, and snatch a four-leaf clover from the ground. Even when adults told me they didn't have any fears of magic, they entertained themselves with astrology, Ouija boards, or tarot (although tarot was somewhat openly feared). They expected bad luck when someone broke a mirror. They avoided cracks in the sidewalk for fear of "break your momma's back." They pulled out a keychain and showed everyone the lucky rabbit's foot they had attached.

People still do these things. The difference in how many people and how often has been tremendous. I've only realized it in retrospect, though. 

I used to visit the graveyard next to the house of my parents' friends. It was small and green. The trees around the headstones created a sheltered space to talk and play. I sang there. I whistled. But if an adult heard me making any sort of music, they would tell me to stop, citing the 'bad spirits' I might attract. (It wasn't even a comment on the quality my singing, apparently.)

"Don't open those umbrellas inside!" my grandmother would call from the kitchen to the foyer on a rainy day. "It's bad luck!"

If I started to open mine anyway, an uncle would leap in to intervene and repeat, "Bad luck! Bad luck!"

So I guess we all believed in luck. It was part of the age we lived in, although people's beliefs in the randomness of good fortune weren't consistent. My father scoffed at the idea that umbrellas could influence anything one way or another. He generally disdained superstitions not his own. However, whenever anything bad happened in the family he would mutter, "It comes in threes," meaning our misfortunes. Then he would stew over the problem until he thought of two other recent unlucky events. If he couldn't think of three in total, he would worry for a week or two until something bad happened, which he regarded as a relief.

This is a part of American social life no one talks about, which is the only reason it's worth mentioning. Superstitions were stronger going farther back in time. There were probably more of them, too. I remember a German friend of my parents who saw omens in fallen objects and the shapes they made when they fell. It was a superstition she grew up with. Plenty of people told me about lucky pennies - you have to find them head's up. If you pick up a penny when it's laying head's down, that's bad luck. It's why I decided as a teenager, still somewhat convinced of my bad luck, to pick up all the bad luck pennies I could. That way, no one else had to incur my sorts of misfortunes.

Three years running, my middle brother and I pulled apart the Thanksgiving turkey wishbone and made a wish. Eventually, the honor fell to my middle and youngest brother. (I think my middle brother won pretty much every time. He wasn't lucky so much as strong and smart enough to pick the best side. Luck, after all, favors the strong and the cunning - and the people who don't refuse their luck.)

For a few years, my father told me I had bad luck. (I had broken at least two mirrors although my father politely said he didn't know the reason for my misfortunes.) I possibly started my father's belief in my bad luck by complaining about it. In gumball machines, I would put in my penny and get, too often, no gumball. Then my younger brother would put his in, turn the crank, and get two or three. This sort of thing happened often enough for me to dread it, for my brother to laugh about it, and for my father to halfway believe in our luck situation. My brother and I would switch places in line suddenly, to try to fool the luck. We hardly ever did, it seemed. One time I put in a whole dime to get a Baby Ruth candy bar from a vending machine. Nothing came out. My brother put in his dime and got two candy bars.

For my father, who was watching us, this was a confirmation. He'd seen the bad luck in action too often. On that day, he offered to buy me another candy bar. (He didn't want to take the second candy bar from my brother.)

"I'll put in the dime and pull the lever," he said. "But you don't touch it."

I knew what he meant. My touch might transmit bad luck. Fortunately, luck didn't seem to be something I could give to others like a bad cold. It was mine alone.
 

Not Even Not Zen 421: Biomythography - Note 132: The Earring, Part IV

The Earring, Part IV

After Thanksgiving, college students had a couple days left on break. During my remaining time, I drove to the mall in our hometown. It was an act of boredom but also one of hope. I was searching for gift inspirations. I knew I had to do Christmas shopping before I returned to college. Of course, the mall was putting up their decorations. I saw a pair of workmen half-heartedly assembling a Santa's Workshop display, where lines of children would gather. I wandered through hundreds of glass-fronted shops on multiple floors. I rode elevators. I shuffled through music stores and the bookstores. And I made myself march through the department stores, the anchors at each end, for an hour. A few times, I took notes about my gift ideas for family and friends.

When I'd had enough, I headed to the eastern doors of the mall. As I passed the last hallway of displays, someone I knew from high school dashed over. She was a girl I sort of recognized although she had never talked with me much. Now, she didn't seem flirty or friendly. She wore the kind of urgent expression usually reserved for warning people about natural gas leaks near the house.

"A gang of teenagers has been following you," she said. She held a tiny, white purse in front of her. I could envision her holding schoolbooks in the same, protective way. I tried to remember more about her. "They want to fight you about your earring."

The comment made me laugh. Except for the occasional annoyance of pouring alcohol on my ear, I'd forgotten about my piercing. My father tried occasional comments but I filtered those out before they registered. My brothers had come down on the side of it being cool but, to them, I was just me. They didn't think much about fashion and they wanted to play card games or board games. So no one cared. Until now, and until these teenagers.

I asked her for her name and she nodded, looking slightly offended. Still, she wasn't totally surprised I'd forgotten. After we chatted for a moment, I remembered the teen gang.

"Who is it?" I asked. I turned and headed back where I'd come from, looking for them.

"I don't know their names." Her voice rose in alarm. "Why are you going back?"

"I want to see who it is." I knew I probably wouldn't know them but it would be interesting if I did. Next to me, I could her my friend's feet do a little dance.

"They want to fight," she reminded me.

The idea made me smile. After all, this wasn't about me throwing rocks at their car. I hadn't insulted their moms. It was about something so small I had literally forgotten it. And I was bored. I'd heard three or four threats this week with nothing coming from them. A fight would be something to do. As I approached the corner in the mall corridor, a set of five teenagers vacated it, headed the other way. They walked into the Hecht's department store. I didn't get a good look at them but they seemed to have the bodies of junior high school students. One of them was a girl, maybe, or had a blonde mullet and skinny arms.

Next to me, my friend gestured in their direction. Now I wondered, just for a moment, if she were putting me on.

"Are you sure they want to fight?" I asked as we slowed down. Beside me, my friend barked a nervous, slightly bitter laugh.

"Well," she said sheepishly. "Maybe not really."

So there was a theoretical gang of nearly-teens who might have wanted to fight about my earring but maybe not. Maybe they just wanted to talk tough. Maybe my high school acquaintance simply liked drama, too. Some folks like to play up every confrontation. Between my relatives and the fight threats, though, I decided I was going to keep the earring.

The gold stud had been nothing but an annoyance. It needed cleaning. It needed attention. It was like having a very tiny, very boring pet attached to my head. The moment someone — or possibly no one — wanted to fight me about it, though, I felt fine to go all in over it.

A day later, I headed back to campus and, in the morning after my arrival, I met a couple young women I knew. We lined up at the outside doors of the dining commons.

One was short and blonde, the other taller and brown-haired. I'd had a crush on the brown-haired one during the previous semester. She gave me a hug. The shorter one patted my arm. Both of them stood back for a moment as they studied me.

"Is that new?" asked the shorter one.

"Yeah."

We walked through the doors and into the warmth. My better friend seemed thoughtful.

"You look good," she said a moment later. The line of people ahead of us paused. She turned and gestured that she wanted to look again. I moved my head for her. She caressed my earlobe. "How do you like it?"

"I'm thinking of getting a gold hoop." Friends had brought it up. It wasn't really my idea. Now it seemed right, though.

"Like a pirate!" the other woman exclaimed. "Yeah, even better."

"Mmm." The fingers returned. My old crush touched my ear and neck. "Christmas is coming up. On you, the gold looks good. Maybe I'll buy you a hoop."

I remember realizing, oh yeah, I've made the right choice. 
  

Not Even Not Zen 420: Biomythography - Note 132: The Earring, Part III

The Earring, Part III

A few weeks after I got my ear pierced I headed home for Thanksgiving. My mother met me as I walked up the drive to the front stoop. Her big smile twitched, for a moment.

"What’s that in your ear?" she asked on the porch.

"Oh yeah, the earring." I shifted my bags to get everything under one arm. I touched the gold stud. "Remember, I got one?"

It's hard to scowl and raise an eyebrow at the same time. She compromised on a skeptical frown. I had mentioned the piercing to my mother on a phone call but, apparently, she had put it out of her mind since then. After all, she couldn’t see it. Now she had to look and reevaluate. It took a second. She shrugged.

My father had the same warning. But he didn't seem to know what to say. He avoided looking at the earring for a while. As it turned out, he was taking the time to think of scathing remarks. He was pretty good at them, usually, but this time nothing he said was memorable. I recall him turning red-faced but there was not a thought he expressed that I hadn't expected.

The next day we had to drive to the Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s. She lived on Shiley Street, in Annapolis. At the time, Annapolis was small. It supported a population of about 20,000 people. If you didn't stroll through the six blocks of downtown next to the bay, you wouldn't realize it was the Maryland state capital. The government offices consisted of a few colonial buildings that didn't look much different than the taverns, which were also colonial buildings. In contrast, the Naval Academy dominated the area. It took up more square acreage, more housing, and more dock space than any other business, including the state government. I think the Navy tried hard not to ignore the town, but it was so big and powerful and the town was so small. The Navy often made decisions as if the town were not there and the residents simply gritted their teeth.

Some of the Annapolis residents were still farmers. Most folks weren't, though, and so they lived in small, single homes bordering a river, a stream, or the Chesapeake Bay. They worked for the Navy, the phone company, or the state government. Some held the types of jobs necessary to support the local infrastructure, including the fishing industry, which to my childhood eyes seemed to mainly involve standing around talking about fish.

And Shiley Street, our destination, lay not far from Tolson Street, which was named after my Great Uncle Harry. So we had an extra connection. The town had decided to name an entire neighborhood of streets in East Annapolis after the local boys who had gone off to fight in World War II. They had survived D-Day together. Then they had also died together during the German counterstrike three days later. My grandmother took me on walks to show me the street and to talk about her brother. This tended to put things in perspective, although obviously not a perspective that prevented me from getting an earring.

In the neighborhood, my grandfather gardened an empty house plot. The neighbors seemed happy to let him have a half-acre farm that the absentee owner didn't know about, nor care. During our Thanksgivings, most of our produce — at least the green beans, lettuce, squash, radishes, and cucumbers — came from his garden harvest.

During my family's drive, I read books and played card games with my brothers. At my grandmother's front door, a few uncles noticed my earring. They had each prepared a one-liner about it, or it seemed, but not much more. They wouldn't get another chance for an hour, either, because my mother's extended family was too big for us to all occupy one table.

On the other hand, they would have time  to think.

At my grandma's, we had to sit by age groups. We had a long table for adults and a round table for children. Despite being in college, I had a perpetual place at the kids' table, which was technically about half filled with adults at this point. Within a few years, I would start to grow grateful for the young adults table, where the conversations grew interesting. Even early on, I could see the potential.

The younger folks had a different reaction to my earring. They shrugged. The younger girls weren't allowed earrings yet so they asked if it hurt to get one.  

Our meal itself was cooked in English family style, which meant all the vegetables were boiled. To this day, I still like boiled green beans. I'm fine with most boiled or canned vegetables, not that I get to eat them much anymore. Butter was our main spice. However, we had personal access to more exotic seasonings, if by exotic you mean salt.

After the meal, I met Uncle Mike as we marched from opposite tables to converge on the pumpkin pie. It was the one vegetable not boiled and we were pretty motivated by it.

“That's damn sissy,” he said, looking at the earring. He jostled my elbow and I did it right back. I knew the main reason Mike had graduated to the adult table was that he'd insisted on it. He also got married, which helped. He had a sort of twinkle in his eye as he tried to tease me, though, because at his core, he sort of liked any form of rebellion even when he didn't agree with it.

“Mostly girls like it," I replied. "Guys think it’s queer, of course.”

“Of course. Don't you worry about that?”

I grunted but I knew he was looking for words so I added, “Why would I care what guys think?”

He accepted that summary. Like most of my relatives, he already knew what I thought of their opinions. I suppose it’s a lesson in laying the proper groundwork.  

“Have you got in any fights over it yet?” He clearly looked forward to them.

“Not yet.” We both laughed.

"You will," he promised. And he was right. We both knew it was coming.
 

Not Even Not Zen 419: Biomythography - Note 132: The Earring, Part II

The Earring, Part II

I woke feeling like I'd been kicked in the brainstem. But I felt like that every time I spent the weekend partying with friends. My world had returned to three dimensions (plus or minus a half) before I slept. My arms and legs rose with me, under my control about as much as they usually were. Most of my cognitive functions reported for duty. That was enough.

Even though Adam and I were in pretty decent shape for a Sunday, we decided to take the bus to the mall rather than drive. We had money in our pockets. We had seen a fancy-ish cigarette lighter Adam wanted to buy. And we knew the jewelry store kiosk manager would gladly shoot holes in our ears. 

We hadn't counted on her young assistant.  

The kiosk manager herself was probably in her late twenties, professional, and the kind of person who had done this eight thousand times. Her assistant, however, looked seventeen with the eager, slightly terrified expression of someone being given responsibility for the first time. She stood maybe five foot seven with brunette hair in a pony tail, nice jewelry, and an expensive shirt. She smiled longingly at my ear while holding her ear-piercing gun. It was brass colored and looked like a cross between a stapler and a nail gun.

"Who's first?" the manager asked cheerfully, as though we were volunteering for a fun carnival game.

Adam and I engaged in the time-honored male tradition of determining our actions through a complex series of facial expressions and half-gestures. The ladies stepped between us and started to speak. 

"There are two of you," Adam pointed out, raising a finger.

"Both at the same time, then," the manager concluded. 

Her young assistant led me to a chair. After a conference with her boss, the assistant returned. She told me her name and that this was her "first time with a guy." I laughed because I thought she was making a joke. She adjusted the light. She touched my jaw to put my head in the position she wanted. With hardly any fumbling, she loaded a gold stud into the gun.

"Just a second." She strode over to where her boss was working on Adam. I could hear they were making sure the pointy side of the stud was facing the right way and all that, just a young woman making sure she was doing things right. 

When she returned, she played with my left earlobe for a moment. She leaned close and I got a reassuring whiff of her perfume, which wasn't too heavy and didn't smell like I'd be allergic to it. A sigh escaped her lips. She raised the gun.

"Oh, you're really thick," she said. 

"Ha ha," I allowed, thinking again it might be a joke. 

But no, she disappeared. I blinked under the interrogation-room style of lamp. A moment later, her boss came to my side. The older woman watched as her assistant squeezed my too-thick earlobe between the barrel and the backing of her stapler. 

"Hold still," she said. It's a popular thing for people to tell you before they cause pain in a humorous way. 

She pulled the trigger. I felt a brief, sharp pinch, as if I'd been snapped by a rubber band. Now I was a man with an earring. When I blinked, Adam was already standing. I don't know for sure but I think his experience was roughly identical. Maybe one of us winced more gracefully than the other. 

"Don't pull out the earring," the manager said, launching into a speech she had given to countless young girls, and now to us. "Don't substitute another earring. Don't try to put a safety pin in its place."

Adam gave me a meaningful look.

"Clean your ear with alcohol every evening for a week," she continued. "Turn the post every day."

Her assistant stepped back and examined her handiwork. She put her hands on her hips and delivered her professional assessment, "You look good."

Like a barber showing off a haircut, the manager turned us so we could observe our new fashion statements in a mirror attached to the kiosk. I hadn't thought we would look any better or worse with earrings. I figured we'd look the same but with small shiny things stuck in our heads. In fact, we did look a little better. We approximated the style of the too-well-dressed guys around our college campuses. Chances were that some young women were going to like this. Adam grinned. His folks were going to have opinions but, at the moment, they didn't matter. For the rest of the trip, he didn't even worry about his folks back home.

Instead, I worried for him. It was a correct concern, as it turned out, but also slightly misplaced.