In Our Own Backyard….Were the good old days all that good?

Talk about it

I looked around a meeting I was in a while back and discovered that I was the only one wearing a watch. I was stunned. It shouldn’t have come as bolt out of the blue, however. My husband announced a few months ago that he was no longer going to wear a watch, stating he always can check the time on his cell phone instead. My mother stopped wearing a watch even before that, using the same logic.

“What if your cell phone battery goes dead?” I questioned, not stopping to think that most people are far more dedicated cell phone users than I am and never, ever let their cell phones go uncharged like I do.

I did give some thought to going watchless. After all, it would be nice not to have the watch slide around on my skinny wrist, or get hung up on the cuff of my long-sleeved blouses, and I would never again have to worry about whether my silver watchband clashed with my gold jewelry….

But I’ve worn a watch ever since I received my first really nice one when I graduated from high school, and wearing a watch has become, well, a part of me.

I finally decided to give it a try, and the first few days I found that I kept staring at my wrist, checking to see what time it was. It had become second nature.

I know it’s probably a part of growing older in a day and age when the rest of the world is moving ahead at the speed of light, but I kind of feel comfortable in that niche. I still love holding an actual book and turning the pages by hand instead of staring at the glowing screen of an e-reader, and I cherish reading my newspaper in bed each morning instead of booting up the Internet. And despite the fact there’s hardly any first-class mail these days, I always look forward to walking out to our rural mailbox and getting the mail – on the outside chance there might actually be a letter there.

Oh sure, I’m not so stuck in the past that I refuse to take advantage of today’s technology. I have 102 friends on my Facebook account (though many of them never post a thing), and I’m the first to suggest an online web chat with our grandchildren every Sunday. And if I ever have to go back to writing my stories for the newspaper by hand instead of on the computer, well, I’m dead in the water.

Sometimes the new ways of doing things actually are better – but sometimes they’re not. I still remember the day when my grandmother stopped going to church when she looked around the congregation one morning and discovered no one else was wearing a hat and gloves. To her, it was a part of showing reverence to the Lord and it went against her principles to do otherwise. From then on, she stayed home and watched the Sunday morning service on TV.

I guess I have a little of my grandmother in me – though I haven’t worn a hat and gloves to church except on Easter morning when I was a girl. But I understand how she must have felt when something that was a part of her life-long experience started slipping away.

Not long ago, I misplaced my cell phone, and after searching all over the house and car, I walked around calling it from my husband’s cell phone in hopes of hearing its ring and locating it. After nearly an hour of exhaustive searching, I finally found it in the bottom of the recycle bin out in the garage. I had no idea how it got there, and I don’t suppose I ever will, but all I know is that during the time it was missing, I realized I don’t ever want to depend on it so completely that I will be helpless without it.

I came back into the house, plugged the cell phone into the charger, and put my watch back on.

Tags: local columns, in our own backyard