Cursive writing, avon and china plates…

…are on the lists (yes, there are more than one) of outdated, obsolete and/or old-fashioned things that baby boomers “needlessly” hang on to long past (according to a wave of fresh new thinkers) their effectiveness.

These lists are springing up faster than mushrooms in a shaded bottomland cow pasture after an early morning summer rain. I guess we are just becoming old and are an easy target.   

And you would think we would be offended. But shucks, we have seen the list. And we recognize the source. And we memorized Shakespeare’s “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” soliloquy long before any of these young pundits saw the light of day.

We do see the humor however. And the glaring mistakes. And the gross misunderstanding of a whole generation….

The list gets on us for still wearing denim. Amazing! These young guys obviously don’t know Gene Autry wrote “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” wearing denim. John Wayne wore denim. Ben Johnson wore denim. Butch Dickson wore denim.

Butch was the coolest guy I’ve ever known. He would hang out up at the City Café in his original 501 Levis pressed and creased to knife-through-the-wind perfection. They were faded to one wash past break-in and fell to just the correct height over his jet black motorcycle boots. We all wanted to grow up to be just like him.

He might have single handedly started our whole generation down the denim trail….

Of course, if these present day critics could have seen Mary Hadley Hayden coming out of the Park Theatre after a Saturday afternoon matinee sporting her denim skirt and matching jacket, they might be singing a different tune all together!

But here is the head scratching part of this whole list deal. I went to town yesterday and three out of four teenagers I ran into had on denim. Now, I admit they needed to add some serious patches on the knees….but it was denim nevertheless.

The list got on us for still using watches as our time machine. Well, it seems simpler, quicker and more efficient to us to check our wrist than to pull a box out of our pocket….like our ancestors used to do.

They made a big deal out of us wearing socks with sandals. Another head scratcher. I grew up in West Tennessee and lived most of my life in Northwest Florida. I don’t remember, nor have I ever seen, any of my contemporaries wearing such a get-up.

These hot-shot list makers must live in California or New Jersey.

Bar soap was on the list. Good gracious alive! Now they are getting personal. And why would it matter as long as you get yourself clean. I certainly don’t want a gel poured out of a bottle onto a rag, or worse yet some kind of fluffy store bought sponge…that had been used by no telling how many people before it got to me!

Golf and baseball were both on the list. Apparently, these sports take too long and are a bit slow and boring for the later generations. That is their loss. And if the world is moving too fast for these games it might be one of the problems of our times…not the other way around!

Meatloaf is on the list. You’re telling me green tea, hummus and chickpeas are “acceptable” but meatloaf is officially off the gastronomical grid. Boy howdy, they will be coming after grits and chicken fried steak next if we don’t get this thing under control! 

They’ve already taken our encyclopedias and shag carpets.

The baby boomers’ strong belief in conspiracy theories is on every list. Of course, none of these millennials were around when Kennedy was assassinated. The first alleged moon landing is ancient history to them. They couldn’t find Area 51 if they were sitting in Roswell, New Mexico, with a roadmap and a built-in Garmin DriveCam 76 GPS Navigator system.

AND they were not in that field down behind Archie Moore’s pond when the space ship landed bringing Leon back. Daddy allowed it was hard to tell with Leon if the aliens had done any great damage to him. I know for dead certain positive at designated times of the month he would put that tin foil looking headgear on and sit alone out by the woodpile late at night.

These new wave avant-garde folks might have one point. I tend to agree with them about the fuzzy toilet seat covers.

But I am hanging on to my landline. They can call me old fashion and point out the advantages of cell phones till the cows come home. I am not giving up my old plug-in-the-wall phone service. I don’t want to miss that call from Judy at Time-Life….

Respectfully,

Kes