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The
Warren Adler E-Sheet 48
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Struggling with Irrelevancy
Remember the
term
old-fashioned? And here they
were telling me that getting older was
becoming fashionable. Statistics tell us baby
boomers are turning 60 and the fastest growing
demographic group in America is over 80. By
all accounts these groups should be the truly
golden demographic group sought by anyone
selling anything, not just products for
incontinence and sticky stuff to keep false
teeth locked into your mouth.
So why I
am struggling to be relevant in a culture that
dismisses me and my ilk, meaning the
well-over-60 contingent.
Let's
start with music. I don't know anyone in
my age group that listens to
hip-hop or even understands the so-called
lyrics. And even if you manage to find a copy
of these inane lyrics, they are all about
hatred: blatant, raw hatred. Trashing women,
hating "the man," and presumably anyone in
authority - cops, moms, dads, teachers,
landlords, elected representatives, the
military, and right up to the President. I'm
told it's all about urban anger, whatever that
means. Is there such a thing as rural anger?
Then there
are movies. Are they making movies for
adults these days? With the exception of
the stuff in the fast disappearing art
circuit, the only hope is to recycle DVDs and
videos of the once great and intelligent
movies of the so-called
golden age of Hollywood. Television is
worse, but then, upfront they tell us that
anyone over 40 is of no interest to them.
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Am I the
only one in this age irrelevancy category
who feels this sense of alienation and, in
some ways, confusion? |
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Of course,
there are so many clues to this age
irrelevancy. You could summarize them all by
picking up
People Magazine in your doctor's
waiting room, which is mostly populated by the
folks in your irrelevant category. Who are
they writing about in People Magazine?
Nobody I know. Or in most magazines these
days.
In large part
it's also true about the book publishing
business, which is saturated with
categories called
chic lit,
lad lit, and memoirs about addiction,
gender confusion, women's rights, family
dysfunction, and political diatribes that
mostly hammer away at what seems to me as a
decidedly anti-American bias.
Am I the only
one in this age irrelevancy category who feels
this sense of alienation and, in some ways,
confusion? Maybe it's because my formative
years all happened before all the liberations:
sexual,
women's and
gay, just to mention a few.
Maybe it's
because I don't live in the sunbelt where
people my age huddle together on golf courses
and at country club bars, and the talk is
comfortably and truly old-fashioned; where the
conversation is not sullied by the under-60
angst of ruminating on how folks "usta" be or
the boring (to others) analysis of their
respective grandchildren's achievements.
Okay maybe
I'm being a crotchety, mean-minded sourpuss,
but my perspective is involvement or attempted
involvement in the culture and ferment of our
times. I really truly want to be part of it,
but alas I confess to this feeling at times of
marginalization as if people under 40 are
talking a different language and, literally,
singing a different song.
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By
today's standards I must be dysfunctional,
mad, surely politically incorrect and
hopelessly naïve. |
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Or maybe it's
because I'm over 70, that age that used to be
old. In fact, ancient. Worse, I don't feel
ancient and I know people half my age who seem
older and less involved than I am. Or maybe
it's because I grew up in a time so different,
so foreign to contemporary life, so naïve, so
innocent, so unhip and uncool that I am
hopelessly frozen into a kind of soporific
ennui where I walk around in a perpetually
irrelevant daze speaking in tongues.
As you can
see, I'm trying to figure it all out. Perhaps
it's time I write my memoirs, which seems to
be the fashion of the day especially if you
happened to have an addiction, or had sex with
a parent or a priest, or was depressed or
suicidal from adolescence to maturity. What is
the word in use to describe all manner of
dysfunction? Oh yes, "issues," a term whose
meaning has been corrupted, like, for example,
minorities.
So here is my
memoir. It won't make
Oprah and if it lasts more than 500
words, and you don't get the wisdom in its
contents by then, shove it into your spam file.
I really must
seem corny to people under 40. I actually
loved my father and my mother and my
grandparents on both sides of the family tree.
I grew up without money, but didn't know I was
poor. I slept, really slept, with my brother
for years because we lived in tight quarters
and thought that was normal. My father was
unemployed because of the
depression and we were dispossessed out of
our apartments a number of times for lack of
rent money. We had to live with my
grandparents who resided in a tiny house
bought for them by their sons.
In those
days, welfare was called "relief." To take
charity from the government by going on relief
was a matter of great shame. My parents would
rather have spent years in the stocks before
taking unearned money from the government.
Families took care of families. Call it a
variation of self-reliance. Remember
self-reliance?
I really
liked living with my grandparents and the big
extended family they spawned, a number of whom
used the little house as a refuge during the
depression. I was never lonely and never felt
deprived or victimized. I had one pair of
shoes, one belt, one tie, one sweater and two
of everything else, pants, underwear, shirts,
and socks. I ate three meals a day and meat
every night for dinner. I went to the library
every three days, had a little radio and lots
of friends.
Sometimes I
witnessed money problems, although I never had
any. My mother accidentally once flushed a
five dollar bill down the toilet and cried for
a week.
I was a
Boy Scout and believed implicitly in the
Boy Scout
oath and pledge and loved being a Boy
Scout. I loved the flag and still do. I loved
parades and as a Boy Scout I marched in the
victory parade up Fifth Avenue. I spent WW2 in
my troop's Drum and Bugle Corps unveiling
plaques engraved with the names of the older
boys serving in the war. I still get a lump in
my throat when I see the
colors go by.
I believed in
my
Presidents, the idea of democracy and was
brought up with the phrase "it's a free
country" when I expressed myself to anyone who
didn't agree with me. I also grew up believing
in what was once called the "American way of
life" and still do. I had fist fights in the
schoolyard, but never bore a grudge.
I grew up in
what they now call a ghetto in
Brownsville, Brooklyn where some of the
store signs were in
Yiddish and many people communicated in
that language, which was the primary language
of my grandparents. Although not fluent, I was
able to communicate with them lovingly and
knew that outside of the house we all spoke
English and were supposed to.
I was taught
to give up my seat to women in a public
conveyance, to take my hat off in the elevator
if a woman was present and to never use what
was once considered cuss words in front of
women. I was taught to be respectful to my
elders and live by the golden rule. Remember
the
golden rule? I was taught manners by my
parents. Remember
manners?
I served
proudly in the
United States Army during the Korean War
as the Washington correspondent for
Armed Forces Press Service. I was a
Private and mustered out as a Corporal. I am
proud to be a veteran.
After college
I worked as a copy boy in the City Room of the
New York Daily News. Most of the people
who worked in the News were booze swilling
Irishman or Italians who called Jews sheenies
and kikes, sometimes under their breath,
sometimes loudly. Sorry folks, that was the
cultural norm in those days and had little to
do with hatred or meanness. They didn't hate
me, and I loved those guys. They taught me how
to drink and carouse and tell stories and
today the Irish and the Italians are, in my
estimation, two of the greatest people on
earth.
I fell in
love, got married, had three boys and am still
married to the same beautiful girl. Boring
right? Okay I wrote the quintessential story
of divorce
The War of the Roses. Remember
imagination?
Okay, okay,
it's not the whole story, but so far I haven't
fudged it. Even to myself, what I have written
must sound dull as dishwater to that
generation that listens to hip-hop, trashes
America and considers themselves victims. The
generation that tattoos their bodies, sticks
earrings in their noses and are forever
protesting this, that or the other. They have
serious doubts about everything and spend
most of their time in self-analysis, stoking
their anger, protesting perceived injustices,
hating this, that or the other and searching
for what they now call
self-esteem.
What a
cornball I am. I loved my parents and my
grandparents. I loved my childhood. I love the
flag, my country, the Army, democracy, and
freedom. I love my wife and my children, my
work. To tell you the truth, I even love
myself.
By today's
standards I must be dysfunctional, mad, surely
politically incorrect and hopelessly naïve.
Am I
irrelevant?
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