My grandfather, Byrce McAlilly, was born in 1910 and died sixty three years later in 1973. He worked in the lumber business, ran sawmills, watched over the hands, smoked Camel cigarettes, raised beagle dogs for rabbit hunting and lived a hard life. Just imagine that if in his final year of life, if he had called me and said, "Hey son, what'cha doin'?" If I had answered, "Oh, not much. Just sittin' around, washing clothes, streaming some music, surfing the Internet." he would have thought I was crazy. Forty years ago, that answer would have been like speaking a foreign language to someone whose lifespan included the end of World War I, WWII, the Great Depression, Theodore Bilbo and Ross Barnett as Mississippi governors and America's walk on the moon which my grandfather thought was a hoax. Let's break that sentence down: "Sitting around" for people who lived off of the land, ate from the garden and lived in a frame home that wouldn't be HUD approved by today's standards, sitting around during the daylight hours would have just been lazy. "Washing Clothes," yeah, there was a washing machine that my grandparents had access to in the latter years of their life, but the dryer, well that was on the clothes line outside. "Streaming some music, surfing the Internet," What did you say? Doin' what with the music?
All of this came to me as I was surfing the net. I saw a headline that stated, "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover Model Leaked." Being a curious individual and one who likes to be abreast of current events, I clicked onto the story. After seeing Kate Upton in a white parka that she had somehow forgotten to zip up, exposing her bare ample cleavage, (just for your info, the magazine cover said she was Polar Bare), I saw a headline out to the side of the Sports Illustrated story that caught my attention. It read as follows:
One Baby, Gay Dad and Two Lesbian Mothers: Imagine trying to explain that to someone from a couple of generations ago.
Or maybe even the trump card:
RICKY: Granddaddy, did I tell you that our President is named Obama?
GRANDDADDY: O'bama, hmmm, family must be Irish.
RICKY: No sir, it's a Kenyan name.
GRANDDADDY: Kenyan?
RICKY: Yep, he's half black.
Granddad chokes out the smoke from his Camel.
Then maybe I could say something like:
RICKY: Hey, what if I come over tonight and we watch a little TV? That show, The Biggest Loser is on.
GRANDDADDY: What's that about?
RICKY: It's these real fat folks. They go to this place and they make'em exercise and see who can lose the most weight.
GRANDDADDY: And people watch that!??
Granddad shakes his head in dismay.
A lot has certainly changed in the past forty years. Take any recent forty year span and a lot has changed over that period of time. I feel certain that forty years from now, as much or more change will occur for our grandchildren. For them, it will not be a big deal. It will simply be the world that they live in.
