I don’t know why it rankled me so when I heard the phrase, but it did. Some throwbacks affect me these days that never affected me before. “My old lady will be chomping at the bit, blah, blah, blah!” So remarked the 41-ish worker casually installing a replacement dishwasher and having a conversation with his helper. Maybe it was a colloquialism of the local area or maybe just a figure of speech, an oxymoron a bit out of sync with the times. Or, is it me that is totally out of sync with the times? I think back, reach into my brain; when was the last time that I heard, “ My old Lady….”? Yes, maybe it was in junior high school in 1959, maybe at a weekend scout camp. The phrase uncomfortably struck me as denigrating an important family member— mother, wife, sister. Families were important back then, a unit wherein you learned things not just out of the encyclopedia. Granted that my mother and I got along terribly, awfully really, but out of respect I don’t think that I ever referred to her as ‘the old lady’. We were taught decorum. And I don’t think I am out of sync with MY times!
So, I did some research the modern way. I looked it up on Google—the all knowing source of everything and anything. Google, that which annhilated the likes of Encyclopedia Brittanica and other revered reference books. Yes, I said “books”—those paper paged things you can still find at yard sales. I can rest assured now that the “old lady” term is apparently just an informal reference to one’s wife or mother–a bit of minutia, irrelevance no more harmful than the phrase “my old man.” Good to know, I thought to myself. Google has now replaced the Wizard of Oz! We just need to click on it, bring it up on the computer screen, watch the U-tube video, click our heels and follow the yellow brick road. This is modern living!
So. Why does that imparted bit of knowledge not sit so well with me? I’m thinking, why didn’t you learn decorum at home from your elders, the people who built this country? Who in the hell is this Wizard of Google anyway? Is it really the AI spectre, the artificial intelligence “monster” that will now do all the thinking for us and devour our individuality? How did it draw so much knowledge to be able to anticipate, answer anything at all about virtually any subject you can dream up? I’m old, been around for 70 something years. I was brought up the old way, old school. This is also referred to as tribal learning—that which has been passed down from generation to generation. Am I now as irrelevant as an Encyclopedia Brittanica? How many times has a young person picked your brain about things they could have learned but didn’t. Google it my son!! Am I now irrelevant, replaced by Google the electronic brain, a relic icon of the past, the Titanic sitting on the ocean floor rusting away. Will you visit it occasionally to assess the current level of deterioration, and predict when I will disappear? Is this what we’ve become, we baby boomers were once thought of as the greatest generation in the world?
Google will give you the answer to your question about which way to turn the nut, but without the story about how his grandpa taught him how to remember it, Google gives out one size fits all answers. But Grandpa tailors information to fit your particular need, your individual DNA.
“Sounds of Silence” was written by Simon and Garfunkel way back in 1964. The song said, “And the sign flashed out its warning, in the words that it was forming and the sign said the words of the prophet are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.” Those disturbing sounds of silence are echoing loudly today.
