I WOKE UP STILL NOT DEAD AGAIN TODAY

I sometimes feel like I fell asleep and was beamed up and transported by a UFO into a future that is alien to me.   It is not the technology that I choose not to be familiar with, or the new music or colloquial use of the language; it is my basic values that make me uncomfortable in today’s society.

I have a wrist watch that cost seven dollars that has more functions than I care to use and will last three years on battery life.   It will be cheaper to replace the watch then replace the battery.   Kids with a perfectly good cell phone will camp out overnight at a store to get the latest iPhone.  Wayfair has just what you need and Amazon will deliver it by drone. 

My favorite sweater, hand spun wool and hand knitted, is forty years old.  My shotgun is fifty years old.  This Solstice my wife bought me a new pair of Bean boots to replace the seventeen-year-old boots I wear every winter; she also bought me a black and white plaid Woolrich wool shirt to replace the black and white Woolrich shirt that was 35 years old and thread bare at the elbows.  My compass, knives, books, camping gear… are all forty years old or older.   There is a piece of birchbark reading Did I Run and Am I Tired that is one hundred and five years old, that hangs above my (whatever you want to call it) room.   I am comfortable with things that are aged and uncomfortable with throw away things.

There is nothing wrong with today’s societal norms; they fit the needs and wants of the people of this age – It is me that is out of step and past my sell by date.     

the Ol'Buzzard