This past
summer, the travel gods conspired so that I was driving to our Adirondacks
house with 4 boys, and no adults. Our annual trip to the Adirondacks with the
Jorgensens had taken an interesting detour.
Usually we are a caravan, 2 vehicles packed to the brim with 9 people, 3
dogs and the trappings of summer vacation. This past year I had a 6 hour ride ahead of me and no navigator as all the
boys- Brian, Charlie, Dane and Holt-chose to sit in the rear of our SUV. Nobody
wanted to ride with the old man up front.
I had the FM airwaves to myself
and other than that, complete silence as the boys were streaming Youtube
videos, perusing Instagram, or watching DVD’s on their laptops…each in their
own electronic cocoon.
Considering
it’s the better part of six hours, I actually like the ride. For the first hour
you’re getting rural, quickly, winding north up Connecticut’s Route 8. Then, a
short jaunt west on Route 20 to the Mass Pike and eventually you’re on
Interstate 87 North around Albany. The
terrain gets more and more mountainous as you head north past Saratoga and Lake
George. Finally, exit the Northway at Exit 30 and traverse west on Route 73 through
the high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains. The trip is varied enough,
and so picturesque, that it’s not mind numbing. Actually, the opposite happens,
you find yourself, thinking.
I look over
my right shoulder to Brian, he’s right behind the passenger seat, “THIS SONG
CAME OUT WHEN I WAS ABOUT YOUR AGE.” Brian, startled, removes his ear buds and humors
me for a few minutes before heading back into his electronics. Back on my
own I’m thinking…Most people of my generation would have a similar response to
Elton John’s, “Daniel.” The guys and
gals from my neighborhood, some who had the actual 45 (that’s a record for you
youngsters), would have similar memories connected to the songs from the 70’s
and 80’s. There are so many songs that I could play, Motown tunes like Diana
Ross’s “Ain’t no Mountain High Enough” or AM Pop one-hit wonders like Pilot
with “Magic” that would elicit a wealth of similar memories for all of us. If I were to play Thin Lizzy’s, “The Boys are
Back in Town” I can predict, with pretty good accuracy, the flashback images of
my friends. We’d have a great conversation about hanging out on Brooklyn street
corners, tossing the football or Frisbee around, busting each other’s chops, growing
up fast…
Continuing
past Lake George on my right, my thoughts meander to a recent rainy day; an
unseasonably cold June day, more November than approaching summer, the perfect
day for a movie. I lobbied my kids and
my wife throughout the day for a family movie.
It was like trying to catch night crawlers with a spoon. My three boys
were playing X-Box, streaming Youtube videos
and my wife was binge-watching episodes of, “Orange is the New Black.” Nobody was
interested in watching a movie together. I’m not usually the type to bemoan the loss of
the old days, well maybe I am sometimes, but I do see that progress is usually a
good thing. I can’t help in this instance, as we have moved away from ABC, NBC
and CBS towards hundreds of channels and customized programming, but think that
as we’ve gained choices we’re losing quite a bit as a family and as a society.
Human beings
need to connect to each other. It makes us feel less alone, we find comfort in
our commonalities . Meeting someone new, we always look for connections. Don’t
we always play the name game when you meet someone new?
“Oh, you’re
from, Huntington, you might know my buddy, Ira Goldstein? “
“I see you
went to Indiana, maybe you know…”
“My whole family read the Percy Jackson
series, did you guys read it?”
And the possibilities
for finding common ground are decreasing.
Today we are all secluded, zombie-like, just like Ray Bradbury warned
us…we are disconnecting from the rest of the world and this isn’t a good thing. So many of the posts we see on Facebook, in all of these, "I Grew Up in___________ in the 60's, 70's..." mention the feeling of community we had in our neighborhoods, in our towns, on our blocks...and we miss it and I think we need it back.
People of a
certain age all know who The Fonz is, we recognize his signature phrase, “Ayyyy”
and the thumbs-up. “Bang Zoom to the Moon” we all know is Ralph talking to Alice
Kramden. Say things like, “NORM!” or “Yadda Yadda Yadda” and we will all know
your reference. In a sense, we speak the same language, there’s a lexicon for
people who grew up in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s…Future generations won’t have this,
our limitless choices are taking care of
that.
The best
example of this was Roots. We all
remember the mini-series about slavery and America’s history that captivated
the entire country. It was on 6 or 7 nights in a row and it felt like EVERYONE was
watching it. We talked about it at school, around the dinner table, at the
office, on our stoops. Kunta Kinte was everywhere. Current generations are living in their Ipod
world, streaming their individual soundtracks and customizing their own viewing
experiences. Everyone is watching, something else. That Roots phenomenon will never happen again. Sure it felt like a lot
of us were watching Breaking Bad, The Wire and Mad Men…but in comparison, the percentage of the population was not
even close.
Think about
any recent conversation you’ve had with someone about TV shows. Was it a meandering
conversation about a bunch of shows that you loved and a bunch of shows that
they loved but you had few in common?
“I’m
watching, ‘Shameless’ have you seen that? It’s great.”
“No, but
I’ve heard good things. You know what I’m watching? I’m watching ‘Homeland.’ Have you seen “Homeland?”
“No, but you
know what I did really love?”
More than
likely you came away with recommendations for new shows to watch and not much
of a connection. Satellite TV is giving us hundreds choices but it’s secluding
us.
And it's happening in our fan affiliations too. In our
neighborhood, everybody rooted for the local teams. You were a Met or a Yankee
fan. In hoops, mostly Knicks. Hockey? Rangers or Islanders. Of course there
were a few outliers but I can tell you, to this day, what teams my boyhood
friends rooted for. As a matter of fact, whenever we catch up, that’s always a
topic of conversation. One of the first
things you’ll hear is, “Mets look good.”
“Yeh, if the pitching holds up.” When I
talk to my sons today, their friends will just as easily be Portland Trail
Blazer or St. Louis Cardinals fans. It’s
all so individualistic; when these guys catch up in 10 or 20 years it’ll be, “So
you still a Trailblazers fan?”
“Yes.” Zzzzz… When I catch up
with Ronny Lopez, who was a huge Islander fan like me, we talk about games at
the Nassau Coliseum, we talk about the four Stanley Cups, about Trottier,
Bossy, Gillies…We talk about how the team looks today. With other friends we’ll
talk about the Mets of today and the ’86 Mets, and the ticker tape parade,
about Lenny Dykstra and Dwight Gooden…
And if this
piece is about electronic cocoons, I have to mention video games. It’s such an
isolative activity. Besides the fact that most games are ultra-violent, they
keep kids indoors, not socializing, not getting fresh air, there’s something
very wrong with this. Kids are happiest when they are outside, running around, together. Sure you can say some of the recent games kids play together but it's just not the same thing. Not too long ago, I took a long bike ride with a couple of old friends
from the neighborhood. We actually went from our old neighborhood in Brooklyn,
out to Breezy Point and back, rolling through Windsor Terrace, Kensington,
Midwood, Gravesend, Marine Park, Flatbush and back again. It was the perfect
warm fall day, and in that 4 hour ride it was eerie, we didn’t see one touch
football game, not one stickball game, no kids playing punch ball, nobody jumping
rope. It was nothing like the Brooklyn we grew up in. This can’t be good. I
can’t help but think that if Adam Lanza just got outside more, socialized more,
people would have known him, maybe he would have had a few friends? Maybe he
would have been happier? Or someone would have noticed he was in danger and
gotten him the help he needed? Instead he was sequestered in his basement, with
hefty bags covering the windows, playing Grand Theft Auto. In his, it turned
out, very dangerous electronic dungeon.
Maybe, if we
were finding it easier to connect these days, we wouldn’t be so polarized,
politically? Maybe it would be easier for us to find common ground if we
already had quite a bit? Instead of antagonizing and labeling maybe we would
start with the realization that we have a lot more in common than we think? And
starting from those commonalities, maybe polite discourse and compromise would
be a possibility?
Now I don’t know what the answer is, it’s just something I noticed and I thought maybe other people have noticed it too? I know we are not going to go “backward” but are there better ways for us to continue to connect to each other?
