Mother’s Day has passed. Just the same I think about my mom quite often. I actually have an idea I have become my mother in some ways.
Still this very day I wondered what my mother would think about this world we live in. She died many years ago, long before a computer would tell us all we think we need to know. Long before a smartphone or whatever became an additional appendage.
I started this thought process, if you could call it that, when I heard on the radio that somewhere in Britain analog clocks were to be removed from classrooms. Analog clocks are the clocks many still have. It has numbers, a little twisty thing to move the hands to the right time. You wind it up, then when it runs down you wind it up again.
So why remove the clocks? As it turns out, many students are unable to tell time. If the time is a digital display they could manage.
My mother would have been dismayed about everyone mucking about with some kind of handheld device called a phone, smart or otherwise. I have to say I never saw my mother chatting away on the phone. She had things to do. Cooking food from scratch, sewing clothes, preserving different foods.
She would prepare all the food for this day and for many more to come. She did not have to Google the process. Somehow the facts for living were already in place.
I hear many in my age bracket saying how smart their children or grandchildren are. I expect they are but I have to ask you, if the Google is blocked for a bit where does the innate intelligence come from? Do they have to wait for an instructional piece on TV? Does YouTube play a part helping to solve a problem.
I do have an idea some of the younger generations have all the information figured out. Still my mom and I wonder how the world will be in years to come. She would have wondered like I do now why clerks cannot make change if the power is off. She would had said tsk tsk at the bodies tattooed beyond recognition. Piercings would befuddle her. Why stick a metal nail in that place? She would have watched as I do, wondering why some do not know how to hold a pen. We can see that those tedious cursive writing drills no longer take place.
I would have to tell her about some of the great medical advances of our age. Science has gone far beyond my realm of understanding or knowledge. Still I know she would not have liked all this new fangled business going on. Folks back in the day maybe didn’t live as long, but we all know the history of parents who lived through wars and the Great Depression. Life lessons that did them well for that time.
I have said all this knowing my mother would look over my shoulder and wonder what all the fuss is about. Beats me!
Thanks for your calls to 250-846-5095. Some good email notes have come to mallory@bulkley.net. Best of all I very much enjoyed meeting you to hear your comments about these words.