Why They Don’t Get It

I find as I get older I seem to always think back to things of the past, like when I was a kid growing up in the 60’s and 70’s.  I guess it’s because I get reminded of things when I hear certain music or see things on TV or movies that remind me of those times. 

Just the other night I was watching a movie set in 1973.  My daughter, the wonderful Miss C, was also watching.  Certain times during the movie she would exclaim “Oh My God that looks like you!” I must say the girl in the movie was the same age I was at that time and looked like me, and funnily enough, she wore flared corduroy pants like a pair that I had and Miss C had seen my old photos.  At times she would say things like: “Why don’t they use the mobile?”  I had to remind her this is 1973.  There were no mobiles.  She covered herself by stating that of course she knew that. 

Then there was a post on Facebook by a friend who lives in my mother’s home town in Southern Portugal.  This page is about the town and its traditions.  The photo he uploaded was of the milkman probably from the 1950’s or earlier.  The milkman would go door to door with his dairy cow and his milk containers.  He would knock on the door and ask how much milk you needed that day, and proceed to milk the cow into the measured containers that you then took inside and poured into your own milk bottle.  I showed Miss C this photo with the large dairy cow, cowbell and all and the milkman at the door of a little house in the town and told her what he was doing.  She laughed incredulously and exclaimed that there’s no way that could be for real.

Then there was the time Miss C complained of no food in the house.  Of course the pantry was full but to her, there was nothing.  I explained that I never actually said such a thing when I was her age.  I ate what I got, and that was it.  She looked at me strangely.  I told her about my father and how he grew up in the country living off the farmland and eating whatever was available at the time, and that it was nothing to eat bread that was six months old and hard as a rock.  They killed the pig once a year at Christmas and that pig’s meat was cured and made into everything from smoked bacon to chorizo which lasted 12 months until the next pig killing.  Of course, she didn’t believe me.  Come to think of it, when my father told me these stories, I didn’t believe him either and used to just say sure, as if.

What I’m getting at is that when we live in a world so far removed from a way of life long gone, it’s very difficult to understand that people actually did live that way.  When I was 12 which is Miss C’s age now, of course we had no computers or mobile phones, let alone internet or anything like it.  We had the old black bakelite telephone that rang with the “old phone” ring tone which funnily enough, is my iPhone ring tone, and you had to use the manual number dial to call someone.  I showed Miss C one of these phones once at a market, she was amazed at how you had to dial the numbers one by one.  She obviously thought it was a toy or something.

I suppose I do appreciate her inability to understand certain things as I was the same when my mother and father used to tell me stuff about their childhood.  Like my mother, when she was that age she would crochet and embroider doilies by the window during the day, then when it was dark they had little oil lamps that would serve as their light.  They ate the fish her father caught during the night fishing the night before and they would have their own version of social networking which consisted of the girls sitting by their ground floor windows and chatting to whomever passed by (and they knew everyone) and met most of their husbands this way.  Imagine that, well I couldn’t then and I can’t now!

Not that it’s bad to have today’s advancement in technology and the greater standard of living that education, stable economies (well in some places!), and advanced societies have created for us to live in these days.  I just think that sometimes it’s good to think back and realise that our families managed to accomplish quite a lot with the limitations they had.  I managed to do all my homework without the aid of Google!  Shocker!  I got together in the street with my friends on weekends without the aid of texting or Facebook!  Everyone managed somehow, and it makes me happy to know that Miss C will have it easier, much easier than I and certainly my parents ever did.  It’s just that sometimes - and I now realise where my father was coming from - it pays to realise how lucky we are and that life is good and we really have nothing to complain about, even if dialling an old telephone is just too weird to contemplate!