As he was explaining it to me, I pressed the TV button to switch the input, but mistakenly pressed the wrong TV button, the power button to the TV...
The TV turned off.
He had previously instructed me three times not to press THAT button, and gave me a hopeless look of exasperation, not so quietly wondering how I could be so slow witted and technologically challenged...
" I thought you were an electrician, dad", he said with an irritating smile.
I started to explain to him about how in my day, we had no remotes; that we WERE the living remotes for the family TV set, describing the world of three channels and rabbit eared antennas that we sometimes had to take turns holding in place, to keep a strong signal...
He gave me that same look I gave my father, forty or so years ago.
The only difference between then and now, is that I didn't swat him beside his head, for his attitude.
Ah, to have the freedoms parents had, back then...
Just kidding.
Sort of....
At least I wish I were...
I tell people that your first colonoscopy is proof of being old.
I am wrong, on that count...
Sometimes it transpires when you, who have always been the "techie" of the family, watch, as your wise acre twelve year old primate, breezes thru stupidly complicated set ups, with his tiny bionic like, opposable thumbs, and you just stare, mystified, trying to figure out exactly when the doctors snuck into your bedroom and labotamized that part of your brain...
Yep. That's when it happens...
Or maybe that's just when you finally notice...
I am officially an anachronism, a man out of time...
My dad calls me into his room at least once a week, aggravated and perplexed that some how he pressed the wrong button on HIS remote, and nothing works anymore.
But he's eighty. He's...old....
I don't understand the society we live in, anymore.
I don't get the politicians that we have running for office, I don't understand the judges that we have in our courts, and I really don't get the media we have, that defines this unreal " reality" we are living in today...
I want the old days, the days of Reagan and Carter, the days of Morrow and Cronkite...
I don't want to have to explain to my pubescent McMonkeys about the things that happen behind dumpsters, and why it is such an important topic. I want to skate the issue, dodge and deny that it is so prevalent in our lives and culture...
I don't want to have to talk to my boys about rape.
I don't want to describe the ways it can happen or their responsibilities and our expectations of them , to be the kind of men that will do everything they can to try to stop it from happening to anyone...
Fathers shouldn't need to have a conversation explaining why this is wrong, but evidentially there are fathers that completely miss that themselves; fathers that justify and defend this awful act. I don't want to have to drag this topic into the open, but I do...
We all do.
Hiding from it and ignoring it, unfortunately ends up communicating a condoning of it, in the minds of those who commit it. We must be clear and vocal and loud...
Rape is never ok, never excusable...
I ache for a simpler time, one where I needn't forge these topics.
I almost wish for the ignorance of generations past, and a naive innocents that never needs to face such darkness. Sadly, this was happening just as much back then, but it was not spoken of; it never was discussed outside of criminal courts...
In one way or another, it always worked its way back to the victims, what they had drank, how they were dressed...
I guess unfortunately,that part has followed us forward into this generation. Maybe, just maybe, we can call it the bullcrap that's it's always been, and obliterated the myth of its existence...
But we need to face it, first...
What I really, really want, is to feel some form of trust for any human authority in our country, again. I want to be proud of.... Someone.
Someone that is supposed to be leading us ...Somewhere...
But I don't.
I feel a country lost and abandoned by every earthly power and influence.
Maybe this is a good thing. It forces us to place our trust in the only real Authority this world has ever known; it makes us insure that we are petitioning He of True Wisdom, Strength and Power...
This circus- like debacle, this Kafka-esque parody, is the perfect exhibit to contrast and prove our complete inability to govern, guide or even positively affect each other, outside of a Loving, Divine influence...
There are people that see this all transpiring, and are joyous, because they know that Jesus is coming soon...
Me too, but I'm not in such a hurry...
I would like to see my children become the men I already know that they can be, and maybe get to meet the children I'm hoping they will eventually have; I would like a few more romantic walks with my Wonderful Wife, and maybe gaze into her eyes a few thousand more times...
But I can't wait for this insanity to be finally and completely replaced, either...
I have hope today, a hope that is real and guaranteed by the Ultimate and Perfect Authority...
I just need to keep my eyes where they always should have already been...
On Him.
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