The Silicon Age

I miss my grandparents sometimes, but not because I knew them very well. Actually, what I miss is their oldness and the softness and mystery of that oldness. They had funny accents, too. I don’t think that these were regional accents; no, they must have been temporal accents. I think that generations speak differently and in ways that are lost over time. I can’t tell if old Hollywood movies reveal the accents of the 1940s or if that was just how people “acted” back then. The women were especially funny--talking fast and loud and with such confidence. I know that my mother’s mother never spoke that way, but my father’s mother might have. My mother’s mother used to laugh slowly and say “Good night!” when someone said a silly pun that she found amusing. I don’t feel old or anything, but I can already see how cooky I’ll seem to someone 60 years younger than me in the future. I’ll mention how little I made per hour, how cheap a gallon of milk was, and how rotary phones were common, and we didn’t have email or cell phones or laptops or blogs.

old fashioned typing: