An Antique in the Modern Age

One thing that makes so many of us so crotchety as we get older is that nothing looks the same. Our memories of “how life was” take on an artificial radiance, and in that golden glow “how life is” looks dreary and threatening by comparison. As we get older, we find ourselves in an alien culture. The music makes no sense; the clothes look, well, wrong; and when we were young only pirates had tattoos. They also had parrots and eye patches. To us, tats, parrots, and eye patches are appropriate accessories only for pirates. A bride with a death’s head tattooed between her shoulder blades, highly visible as she comes down the aisle? At that, the older people in the church ask themselves, Is this the same country I was born in? Or is she a pirate?

I refuse to become that mean old guy spending my last days chasing kids off my lawn. I try not to over-glorify the past. I adored my Pappy, and I loved staying at his old house in tiny Randolph, Texas; but I hated using his outhouse. The good old days were good in some ways, yes, but there is no way to put a golden glow on an East Texas outhouse. Absolutely no way. Not everything about this brave new world is good, but I’m crazy about indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and drive-through car washes. The issue is balance. I do not have to approve of everything in contemporary culture. I can state certain things as facts. Irrefutable facts. Michael Jordan was the GOAT—period. Hear the word of the Lord. Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player ever to grace the game. That is not up for debate. That does not mean I have to hate LeBron. I can pity that he cherishes the myth of his assumed greatness. Sad little man.

The Beach Boys? The Four Seasons? Chuck Berry? Well, what can we say? They were better than any rapper ever born or yet to be born. A muscle car from the fifties makes a Smart Car look like a stupid car. And come on—face the truth, up against Sid Caesar and Bob Newhart, Bo Burnham and Aziz Ansari are rank, unfunny amateurs. That is not my opinion. That, as they say, is settled science.

What can happen, though, is that stopped at a traffic light, we resent the kid in the car a half block behind us playing Jay-Z or Kendrick Lamar so loudly we can hear every word, none of which we can understand. That’s where we go wrong. That’s where we can become brittle and angry and dried up. That’s where our memories become our idols, not treasures, and our present becomes a strange and loathsome land whose culture and citizens we despise. When we let that happen, we lose one thing we badly want, which is the respect of young people. No one respects angry old people who do not respect them.

To learn more about Mark Rutland’s new book, Keep On Keeping On, visit MyCharismaShop.com