Sticking His Neck Out
Posted at 5:35 AM on June 23, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(13 Comments)
This note was in my e-mail this morning.
Hi Mr. C.,
What do you think about this giraffe?
I went to the zoo yesterday and man, are they weird! This one was sticking its tongue out at me. I took the picture with my cell phone and texted everyone about it, posted the picture at my Facebook and Twittered "G-raff at mn zoo sez what up?" Then I blogged about it at Myspace. And that was just the first stop. By the time I got all the way around the Northern Trail I was exhausted on account all the work my thumbs were doing, combined with the heat and humidity.
This do-nothing summer is wearing me out.
I'm waiting for that stimulus jobs program to kick in, but so far nobody from the White House has called me with a solid offer.
Meanwhile, I noticed how old fashioned your Heartland people are when it comes to wasting time. That string of comments yesterday about summer memories sounded like the kind of thing people say while they tip their straw hats to each other on the village green.
"Care to sit barefoot on the steps at twilight, Eunice?"
"No, Heathcliffe. Let's run through the neighbor's sprinkler instead."
"Capital idea! Then we can ride our bikes to the lake!"
Geez. Today's kids can't do any of that. Running through somebody's sprinkler could get you shot for trespassing. And that barefoot-at-twilight idea is a quick way to get Lyme's disease. Riding a bike to the lake? As long as it's downhill, I guess. I wouldn't want to get to the lake all sweaty. What if there's a bunch of cool people there? You can't show up all drippy and disgusting or people will Twitter and blog about how gross you are, and within minutes it'll be worldwide, just like this giraffe.
Not that anybody's actually looking at any of this stuff.
Last week I decided I was going to become a big star on Twitter and amaze the world with my clever and hilarious 140 character-or-less messages, but then everybody in Iran got into the act and now I can't get anyone to read my Tweets unless I start them off with "God is Great" and go on to say I'm hurling rocks and the state police, which I'm not.
I'm not doing anything.
Me and my unemployed friends are very stressed out. Every day our parents and grandparents go off to work the fast food and movie theater jobs we thought we were going to have, and we're stuck Facebook blog-tweeting to nobody about giraffes.
I hate to say it, but I kind of admire the way your generation got to be so good at doing nothing when you were kids. But at least we have our electronic time-wasters to help us kill the hours. Look, I just used up 3 minutes sending this to you! Thanks for keeping me busy.
Your friend, B. Spamden.
I guess Bubby's "Summer Media Camp for Teens" idea from a few weeks ago didn't get any takers. And he has yet to become a You Tube sensation. Anybody need a teenager with strong, flexible thumbs? Somebody to manage your online presence, perhaps? Updating all your web identities?
Comments (13)
Reading and listening here in Winona! Enjoying the conversation...
nah, even if Bubby did all of that for me i still wouldn't get it, i guess. i was complaining to my friend that the cell phone that my friends gave to me (for safety) over my protests wouldn't work. Steve and i tried it and tried it. he would call the number and i would sit by the side of the road waiting for his call.... we reset the phone numerous times. i could call out but not receive calls. she said "you have to turn it on to get calls, dummy!" who knew? so i never turn it on. and, you guessed it, i don't know how to retrieve messages either :-)
Like all previous generations I do feel sorry for today's kids, all our time saving devices and fast foods have them on the chubby side with no drive whatsoever. They obviously were looking in the wrong places for jobs this summer, they need to aim higher with their techie media capability and opposable thumbs, not to mention their speed at it!
No sprinkler running for them!!!!
I was just thinking the other day about all of us adults taking jobs from Bubby and friends, and I decided to help the situation -- I haven't logged-in to my facebook page for weeks now knowing there are kids out there who can do it for me.
* whew *
Good Morning!
Your suggestion to hire Bubby to keep up with my on-line presence sounds tempting, I'd like to do my part for the kids looking for work this year, but it would only take him about 10 mins to hit every site. Besides, isn't it considered 'bad form' to have someone ghost fb-blog-tweeting for you? Authenticity is what keeps the social networking world a-whirl, right?
Got anything about being 'real' in the music archives?
Thanks!
In some ways, I do feel sorry for the children of today, as I think childhood is less enigmatic than it once was and that we begin grooming them sooner to be adults in the digital age. Really, though, I have found that in the right community, the kind of childhood we remember can co-exist with the modern variety. My children google, facebook, twitter, and carry their cell phones with them everywhere. They also enjoy long days spent on their bicycles in the sunshine, attending to their lemonade stands, afternoons at the rec center, and even running through neighbors sprinklers when the opportunity presents. Heck, they incorporate their cell phone cameras in the kinds of high adventure games we fondly remember. Neither my children nor I will be giving up our modern amenities anytime soon, but we continue creating memories of the elusive summers of the past.
I have a lot of contact with youth in my job as a subsitute teacher. They can be very active in the classroom and display considerable "creative" activity. I some times have to send some of them to the office because they are a little too active.
One student tried to send me to the office. He hid in a corner of the classroom with the microphone for the classroom speaker system and made an announcement that I was wanted in the office.
Good Tuesday morning,
I had a three paragraph comment all written out yesterday only to discover my internet connection had quit...well, the moment has past, but let me tell Bubby this: read Ray Bradbury's (Bubby does read books, doesn't he?) Dandelion Wine for suggestions on what to do with his summer time. Oh, no, electronics as it is a 1925 summer. sorry, Bubby.
Stay cool, y'all! (I'll be in an air-conditioned windowless building, myself).
Oh..yesterday in Duluth it was 57 degrees. So it goes in the "air conditioned" city. Alas, the wind has changed and we expect heat today.
Wow, tangos, sambas, cha chas! Who else could get me dancing at 6:30 in the morning?! Thanks for the "heat appropriate" music!!
One favorite summer memory is street dances in the pool's parking lot! It had cooled off, there were plenty of cute boys to flirt and dance with, great 60's music...
Barb -- we've had a similar experience, finally got a cell phone for emergencies, but never programmed it to take messages. So it's for our convenience, not anyone else's, I guess. :)
Eleanor -- I appreciate your thoughts on this. I'm at my mom's (retirement community) place in Iowa this week, and we had that discussion last night. Today I'm showing her what a blog is!
Just had eight kids (12-3 yrs in age) at our very small, very old cabin this past weekend. We are next to a river which they enjoyed from sun-up to sundown.
The biggest hit of the weekend, though, was the hammock! All of them spent hours swinging, pushing each other into and out of it, and trying to flip it over. We had to put restrictions on some of their antics, but for the most part the kids made great use of a very low-tech, old fashioned, recreational device.
I needed to use the hammock for some old fashioned sleep after the kids had gone home - it worked for that, too : )
I think we'll be putting up the little pool in the backyard today.... although I'm sure my daughter's cell phone won't be too far away.
For years the message on MY cell phone said "If you've gotten this recording, you probably dialed a wrong number, because I don't give this number to anyone but the babysitter." I also had the number on a post-it note in my wallet because I had never memorized it.
Stay cool, Heartlanders!
so nice to see that i'm not alone in not wanting a cell phone or other electronic stuff - i treasure my privacy and peace and quiet
thanx for playing the Paul Simon America song yesterday, it always makes me think about those times, and it is sad but things havent really changed much since then, have they? arent we still looking?
gotta say that i would much rather be helped by an older person in a coffee place or a restaurant or wherever, cuz so many of the younger ones just don't seem to care, like they are only there cuz someone forced them to be
i work at a bookstore where we COULD hire 16-18 yr olds but we don't cuz we've had consistently poor experience with their work ethic (plus they don't read and can't spell, but that's another story)
i know i sound like an old fuddy duddy but i'm really not, i'm around young people all the time, just not teenagers
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