Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Old Dudes Rule---Young dudes drool

Its all very natural, and one sees this law of the land on many levels.  Mostly graphically demonstrated in nature.---the young bucks challenging the head of the herd---getting whipped back into line any number of times, til finally the young buck having learned more, experienced more, even as the old senior buck begins to slow down a bit-----the net result altimately is that the old buck loses, and is left out for the wolves.  One, I suppose ,  could relate that sequence in a less gruesome way----but hey being an old dude here---I aint got all that much time to waste being Mr. Nice Guy, leastwise I am not of the opinion one should play Mr. Nice guy all the time.---it incourages the Kids to think maybe its "their time"---when its not.---least not quite yet.  
     The other day, at a family gathering, I allowed that I was ignorant of how to download music to my computer, not having had any reason to do so, had never bothered to learn that simple drill.  Even as the words fell from my lips, my young buck Grand-nephew's, jaw fell open, and simultaneiously I saw his eyes flick around, and I could see that my confession of ignorance in the topic was an imbarrassment to him.  His generation grew up with computers, boom boxes, cds, cell phones, and Ipods---taking them all for granted.  I don't think it really occurred to him to think that hello--MY GENERATION INVENTED ALL THAT STUFF.
     My Grand-Neph (having just recently turned 21---which makes him half a century my junior, has no idea that I,  his Great Uncle,  have actually sat in engineering discussions with the likes of Andy Grove (President of Intel---the company that first produced a computer on chip).  That I spent 30 plus years in Aerospace Procurement working on almost all of the big programs, that got us to the moon and back, to mars, to jupiter, to clear out of the solar system.  Oh sure I get the old "gosh uncle gary it's not like it was when you were are age crap"---Like Hello I am senile and don't remember life before there Fathers and Mothers were even born?? and have keep my eyes closed ever since ??-----is it me but are kids really getting dumber with each generation??
     Actually I am darn proud of not only my Nephews and Nieces (all six of em), but equally proud of their offspring , including the grand-nephew mentioned above----like I said he was imbarrassed "for" me---well I have since last saturday corrected things and the world now knows Gary (aka Old Dude) knnows how to download music-----and all the planets and moons are in their proper orbits once again. 
     Actually come this next Monday (07/28), I will be meeting with acouple of my nieces and their significant onthers and taking the two hour public tour of JPL (Thats Jet Propulsion Labratory for you Civilians---JPL makes all those nifty things ya see crawling all over the Moon, Mars and Jupiter and sending back the PHEENOMENOL pictures).  Thats assuming this old dude can google the hwy map to get from here to there-----got til Monday to google that one---and one thing I have learned in my years, never do today what ya can procrastinate, and put off til later to do---sometimes those tasks just have a way of evaporatng  and not being required at all, and you would have just wasted the time and effort, and don't ya just hate to waste time like that?

2 comments:

Speak up, don't be a nebish---your opinions do count.