New Normal

A while back Brandon commented on something that I thought was just a small part of one of the blogs I wrote. He made a remark about what I had called 'The New Normal', that is to say that there is a new order of things that are becoming the constant state of all our lives. Life without certain people, less communication between others and certain activities just being much harder to accomplish than they have in the past.

I remember a time when I would be winding down to watch television right about now, when Futurama was on and then Simpsons and the X-Files after that. That was my normal Sunday night routine. Back then I didn't have a car, (Gas was like 99 cents) I didn't even have a cellphone, not that I needed it because I never talked on the phone much anyway. Back then there were things that bothered me, normal teen drama bullshit...but nothing like the problems I have today. And back then the world was a simpler place. I felt safe no matter what, the News was just the News, but it was hardly ever Doomsday talk. My friends and I were a solid group, I knew where I stood with each one of them, and the few people I had around me that I didn't like were so insignificant that I didn't care if they were there.

Now all of this is not the case everything has changed and not for the better. The world, my life, everything around me has just gotten darker. And I'm not sure if we can just call this growing up or some kind of growing pain. But I hope dearly that all of this is not the New Normal. I noticed that more and more banks are open on Sunday, that used to be one of the most taboo things you could do. Sunday was the Holy Day. I see more and more that people just don't care about you, or anyone else, and its hard to care for others if every time you do you get stabbed in the back.

People's lives are shrouded in fear, their entire day to day being is marked by the trouble they manage to avoid, not caring who else might run into that same trouble. Lying and cheating have become commonplace. Underhanded practices are encouraged in most businesses and even in some school. This isn't the world that we wanted to grow up in? This isn't the world we wanted for our Children.

I hope for their sake this is not going to become the Norm.

Down Points And Shades of Gray

This morning I went to a place that I hadn't even thought about in probably thirteen years. I went back to my old elementary school. You see before I moved out to Manvel, before my mother died when I was six, I lived in Spring, Texas and I went to school right where my nephew goes now.

Of course, that was all fourteen years ago. And now I fee old, fourteen years. From the moment that we stepped into the cafeteria it was kind of creepy. I mean when i think of that place everything was so huge. I was so tiny. I remember not being able to see over things, and now those same things barely reach my waist. I remember it taking forever to walk down those halls after recess but because my stride is bigger now the walk is barely even registrable as a walk.

I took my nephew this morning because of the Donuts for Dad's event that was going on at his school. His dad, my brother was out of town on account of business. Funny though, they were doing the exact same event when I was his age and my father couldn't make it, the price of having a dad as a doctor. I suppose sometimes I think that I wish I had more time with my parents, you know before I got to that age where I realized half of what they told me was bullshit and that they annoy the Hell out of me.

But I wonder what the me back then would say if he met the me now. I don't even think little kids know what to say. Their minds don't work the same, they're more abstract. And the world they observe, even though it might be the same world we observe, is a much happier place when you don't have over a decade of grief backing it up. When my mom died that was probably when I realized that bad things didn't just happen on television. And that when bad things happened they weren't resolved in thirty minutes with time enough for commercial breaks.

I used to watch a lot of Nick at Night when I was a kid, now there is a world you would want to live in,want your kids to live in. All of that wonder and hope, all of the problems ironing themselves out in one or two episodes. No grief and best of all, no shades of gray. Because the shades of gray are what really get you in life, the areas where its hard to tell right from wrong and your moral compass is going berserk.

Life, well life now, seems to just be marked by a series of down points and the areas of gray fogginess. And the trick, I've learned is to learn what down points to dodge, which ones you can't and how to take a hit. Through all of this gray fog you can't see far ahead and some things aren't always morally spelled out.