Shin dealer's Liszt

"I was part of the Sixties," my professor says, "That was my generation, my youth. My parents and I argued about flower children and about our radical ideas but we thought we were going to change the world. I was young, I believed humanity could change, we really thought we were going to change the world. But I'm older now and a little more wise and so blah blah blah--" he continued on. I lost track of where he was going because I wanted to shout out, "STOP! STOP! We're YOUNG! Let us be young! Let us believe we can change the world, we all know that radical youth won't change things like you wanted it to, but let us hold on."

[sigh]

When I was in elementary school I was taught that (1) America was a melting pot and (2) that by the year two thousand we would have flying cars we could program to take us to our destination. I was (1) disturbed by autonomous cars and therefore glad when that hadn't been realized by 2000 and (2) I was disturbed to find out that the melting pot wasn't melted the way I thought it would be. It was this creeping realization I had as I progressed through my grade school years. As a wee child I learned about WWII and thought that was the end of war. Then I learned about Vietnam but that was OK, that was twenty years ago and there were thirty years in between that and WWII.
But then there was the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs and Korea and McCarthy's hunt for communists and the First Gulf War. "Wait, this can't be right, when do we stop fighting?" I wondered. But it was OK, there was still Martin Luther King, Woodrow Wilson, Edward Murrow, Susan B. Anthony, Dorothea Dix, women voting, Gandhi and Mother Theresa, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
Then Clinton had his scandals, Bush declared war on Afghanistan, people were hating on Mexican immigrants (regardless of legality), football games lasted four hours and fans were gross and mean.

That was it.

The world would never change. There were too many sweet bro's and crooked politicians.

The cynicism that my sister claims resided in my heart from birth hit a peak. Quick, tell me what's more true: we should send millions of more troops to Afghanistan or we should not and see what happens then.
Next question: Should we spend billions in bailouts and go into debt or let everybody close up shop, declare bankruptcy, and lay-off billions?
Next question: should we create six more planets just like earth so that everyone can eat the way people in North America eat or should we send our left overs to Africa?
Next question: Should Google go to China and submit to Chinese government censorship or should Google stand firm for personal freedoms and stay out?
Next question: When your best friend has finally confessed to you the severity of the abuse that went on in that relationship for three years should you do what you can to see that boy brought to justice?

JEOPARDY says, "What is World Peace?"

[ha...ohh...sigh]

STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP the train I'm YOUNG, can't follow Holden Caulfield to the backwoods where we live in a cabin hermitting ourselves from the world of Crash and Schindler's List. Can't do it. Can't be jaded already.

Last year, when I nannied, we loaded every nannykin of us into the red Radio Flyer wagon. We marched to the dinosaur museum and haphazardly ran to and fro between dinosaurs and waterfountains and fossils and then we went across the street and rolled down the big hill of grass. Well, the two year old kind of crawled down head first.
There's something in that rolling down hills and telling jokes that don't make sense and building forts. There's something about not looking for mutual interests just for time spent together.

So what I'm saying is that in lieu of any amazing solution to the world's problems, can we just spend time together?

Because I think that changes things.


In this movie I saw the other night* someone says of their lofty goals, "We're too young to know we can't do it."
Awe gee, it's great to be twentytwo and young.


*Amazing Grace