DRINKING IN THE KIDS

Got to watch the younger generation, observe the trends, listen to them, hold off thinking No ! They're wrong!

When my Mom started disappearing from her friends, I knew it. She had good reasons ... Marion G was constantly asking Mom how old she was, zooming in closer and closer, and Mom didn't want M.G or any of her friends to know her age.

Then, it was what Mom read and didn't read. She'd never been been much of a newspaper reader. But Time Magazines piled up, unread. She didn't know the names of the newest latest appliances, cars, movie stars, or sports heroes.

She thought all popular music was noise, but Blues, Boogie, Rock and Roll meant nothing to her, when they had so much meaning to me.

Mom tuned out. Finally, in the last years of her life, she didn't answer the phone, or bother with the People Magazine, which I was sure would interest her. The embroidery things I brought her just sat on the table by her bed.

Hey Em, this is something to pay attention to. Never forget. Hand on to JD and anyone else you meet in the younger, (always younger) generations. Don't tune out.

Hear what they're listening to. Make an effort to catch onto the slang. Don't cringe at the verbal shortcuts -- you don't have to use them, but you need to hear and feel where they're heading. Pay attention to their latest style. (Do styles really change? It seems to me they just ebb and flow, return like waves from a thousand miles, a thousand days ago.)

I see myself disappearing like Mom did. Turning off from things that seem, at first ridiculous, later, ludicrous, later nonsensical, stupid, repulsive. Stop it! Turn back on! Reappear! Laugh at their ridiculous vulgarnesses ... (Is that a word? Hey, Em, you your made up words are ridiculous to them.

Grab onto history: Cars and planes were unimaginable. Trips to the moon are real. Clothes that seemed like SciFi, may be the clothes you'd see, if you came back for a visit, after your life was over.

Can't you think your negatives privately? Don't burden the kids with your older generational icks, yikes. Feel what you feel but say it here -- find a remedy while you're expressing yourself in your blog.

Don't disapprove.

Find beauty in what's awkward or ugly. Try on their "wrong" clothes and see yourself freer, nicer, more interesting to them. Let yourself imagine your way into the nightmarish, congested, deafening partying,

Disappearing is WRONG. It's slowly, but surely hurrying you to the end of your life, a time when you have no choices.