Translate

Friday, 21 October 2016

Old Friends

Getting old(er) is a strange experience. Apart from the obvious ravages of time, which some of us fight with both (artificial) tooth and nail, and the rest of us accept with grumpy ill grace, there are also the tricks that the passage of time can play on us. For instance I have noticed that increasingly I am seeing in younger peoples faces, echo's of my youthful friends and family.

The Past Sometimes Looks Sunnier Than The Future As We Get Older
The Past Sometimes Looks Sunnier Than The Future As We Get Older

On the train I recently almost said hello to a girl, who bore a remarkable resemblance to a young girl of my youth. Of course this was entirely superficial and unlike Mr John Titor, I had not in fact travelled back in to my own past.

However it took a conscious double take to recall that her appearance was like that girl had looked thirty years ago. This has happened a couple of times in the past year or so, and I guess it just proves that there are only so many facial models nature can employ before repeating from an older template.

I can see why people with Alzheimer's or Senile Dementia can get so quickly confused if they just lose that ability to recall where they are in time. Incidentally, finally some great news on the Alzheimer's front ... a drug (LMTX), that stops and even reverses the illness.

Anyways .... as I was saying, travelling through time in one direction is generally a real pain. However one advantage, especially with a younger generation who seem to have been taught little at school, is that jokes and expressions that seem ancient to me, can be reused, like fine old wines, rather than mere vintage chuckles.

I recently worked with a man in his late twenties who literally would laugh out loud, at expressions that he had never heard before. At first I thought he was doing so in a mocking way, but later heard him report one to a mate of his on the phone, and realised that he genuinely hadn't heard it or the others before.

What that says about the younger generation and the education they get now, it is hard to say, although I will remark that white males are now the worst performing group in the English educational system. Still not my problem, so I enjoy the celebrity of being thought occasionally 'witty', simply by reusing funny expressions from my own earlier life.

Old Soldiers Enjoy The Company Of Their Contemporaries
There's A Reason Why Old Soldiers Enjoy
The Company Of Their Contemporaries

Still its a truism to say that its only with people of our own age that most of us feel comfortable - much of this is that we share a cultural understanding, but the downside of this fact is that as we travel along times path, people of our own generation fall way ... and like the centenarian (I was going to write 'centurion', which sounds better, if wrong), I met 30 years ago, we are left alone drifting in a sea of time, on which we can recognise none of the shores and spot no safe landfalls.

So generally its all down hill. For instance I have now lost the thread of where I was going with this post so ...............

2 comments:

  1. Very astute observation on time and age if I may say so.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the comment ... It comes to us all and I'm in the foothills now!!

      Delete

All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.

Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.

Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.

Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.

Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.

Followers

Blog Archive

Its a Pucking World

Its a Pucking World
Dreamberry Wine Cover

About Me

My photo
A middle aged orange male ... So 'un' PC it's not true....