It Is Over

I was in Miami a couple of days ago helping a customer buy flooring for a house he is building in Key West. I was driving through miles and miles of traffic with cars and trucks speeding by at horrifying speeds. Siri was directing me to drive to our next destination, all the while I had my right hand on my horn prepared to honk to avoid a possible collision. I remarked about how I feel abused in Key West when I have to wait for a traffic light to cycle twice before I cross a street or when it takes me longer than five minutes to get to the grocery store. Driving twenty minutes to go from one store to another at sixty miles an hour was insane. When we got out to the car I said "At least we didn't get shot!" That happens a lot up there - random shootings.

I asked my customer who I have known for several years if he is a US citizen. Yes, he said. I knew that, but for some reason needed to reinforce the fact in my mind. Then I said "America didn't used to be this way" as if I was apologizing for the gun violence, the intolerance between various parts of society, the self-obsessed Snapchat - Instagram generation, the outrageous cost of homes, the scarier than hell traffic, TRUMP - all of it - every last little bit of the way we live our lives in 2018.

My customer is probably ten years younger than me. He grew up in eastern Europe under Soviet rule. I view him as having left an oppressive environment for the utopia America was portrayed as in the movies and TV shows of the 1950s and 1960s. I grew up in a suburb just west of the Denver County line. The Colorado Rockies emerge out of the ground about six miles west. I always knew where I was because the mountains were located to the west. It was more that, though. I knew this place as my home - what to expect - we were alike even if we were each different. It was a whites only world by law. Most of my world was confined to twelve blocks in either direction from my house. My grandmother and my church were five and seven blocks to the east. My grade school was one block west.

I had a quick flashback to a conversation I had with a very close friend a few weeks before. He and I were watching a movie on Netflix when he said something I thought remarkable "I wish I could go back for a week!" The movie was taking place in the 1960s when he was a kid or young teen. Then he amended his wish "No, a month!"  I got it. You could not possibly cram enough of the life we used to live in just a week. It would take a month at the minimum to recapture the essence of our lost lives.

I started this blog three years ago but never finished it. I will do that today. I met with my doctor yesterday. He is older but not as old as I am. I told him we're not going back to the way life was fifty years ago. It is over. He nodded in agreement. It is over.