Thunderstorms, some heavy during the morning hours, then skies turning partly cloudy during the afternoon. High around 85F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected..
Tonight
A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
It was National Lampoon’s “Vacation” that did it for me.
It’s been 40 years since that movie was released. My high school buddies and I watched the VHS probably 50 times, and I’ve seen it another 50 since then — on DVD and then Netmazon or Amaflix or whatever. Some technology I don’t quite understand. Seemed amazing back then to be able to watch a movie whenever you wanted at home if you bought the tape. Now I could watch it — or anything else – on a gizmo in my pocket on an airplane.
That’s one set of changes, but even that’s not what got to me.
What got to me was thinking about that time span and comparing it to the one before it.
In 1983, when “Vacation” came out, I was 15. I’m 55 now, but I still feel like a kid in a lot of ways. When my folks were 55, they seemed stiff. When my grandparents were 55, they seemed ancient.
In 1983, the big songs included “Photograph,” by Def Leppard, and “Let’s Dance,” by David Bowie. Those are dated, sure, but pop music now is not that different.
Forty years before that? World War II, before The Bomb, before even D-Day. It was the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Rock and roll hadn’t been invented. It seems like an entirely different planet, as if everything occurred in black-and-white.
That’s not true, of course; time moves on. Born that year: Chevy Chase and Mick Jagger. Change was in the works, as it always is.
I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last, to say this: It just feels as if the pace of that change has picked up.
It’s also humbling to consider; I imagine my kids and grandkids roll their eyes at my fuddy-duddiness, in a way I can’t even fathom. Perhaps in my use of the term “fuddy-duddiness.”