Dept. of Me, Me, Me!
Wednesday, 25 March 2015 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffy_rI've Been Thinking
I am old enough* that seeing an airplane go overhead was cause to run out of the house and look to the skies when I was growing up.
I am old enough that the first telephone number I remember was 884.
I am old enough that I remember the excitement when they put a transmitter up that allowed us to get our second television station. In black and white.
I am old enough that I learned to type on a 1930s-era Remington.
I am old enough to remember bristol board, manila paper, paper with the wood chips still in it, and school tests printed in purple aniline dye by a spirit duplicator**
I am old enough that my first comic book cost 8 cents. It went up to 12 cents when I was in fourth or fifth grade.
I am old enough to remember Boer War veterans coming to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day.***
I am old enough to have listened to the funeral of John F. Kennedy piped through my school classroom****
I am old enough to have sent a telegram unselfconsciously.
I am still young enough to relish all those things.
* .. and lived as a child in a rural enough area ... but it was not in a wilderness.
** or Ditto machine.
*** Hey, I was very young, and the two of them were very old. Very old.
**** And I was in Canada.
I am old enough* that seeing an airplane go overhead was cause to run out of the house and look to the skies when I was growing up.
I am old enough that the first telephone number I remember was 884.
I am old enough that I remember the excitement when they put a transmitter up that allowed us to get our second television station. In black and white.
I am old enough that I learned to type on a 1930s-era Remington.
I am old enough to remember bristol board, manila paper, paper with the wood chips still in it, and school tests printed in purple aniline dye by a spirit duplicator**
I am old enough that my first comic book cost 8 cents. It went up to 12 cents when I was in fourth or fifth grade.
I am old enough to remember Boer War veterans coming to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day.***
I am old enough to have listened to the funeral of John F. Kennedy piped through my school classroom****
I am old enough to have sent a telegram unselfconsciously.
I am still young enough to relish all those things.
* .. and lived as a child in a rural enough area ... but it was not in a wilderness.
** or Ditto machine.
*** Hey, I was very young, and the two of them were very old. Very old.
**** And I was in Canada.
no subject
Date: Sunday, 29 March 2015 10:53 pm (UTC)I can say that much of my degree of comfort with the physical signs of aging undoubtedly comes from the fact that I was raised not only by my mother, but by my maternal grandmother and grandfather. Among the first faces I recall that were filled with love toward me and my brother were lined, and the arms and hands that held me had the fragile, translucent skin of age. I remember touching the blue tracery of veins in my grandmother's hands and marveling at how soft the skin was. With so much love and so much care bestowed upon me by people of such age, it's probably no surprise that the look of age pushes very positive buttons for me.
Plus the fact that my maternal grandmother was a pretty amazing woman all by herself. And my grandfather, despite some hefty failings, was also amazing. Oh, the stories they both told me, and the care they lavished upon everyone around them!
And I can certainly understand how the force of someone's mind and personality can illuminate the vessel in which those things are seated. An engaged mind, a searching spirit, beautify any vessel in which they sit.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 31 March 2015 11:10 pm (UTC)And again, gotta love it that we are such well-delineated opposites, heh...