Grandma Henke

      I took type in high school.    I typed 65 words a minute on a manual typewriter with no errors.    That was high enough to get me an “A” so it must have been a good speed.       Right after I finished that class they quit teaching on manual typewriters and moved to the new electric ones and my fast speed was no longer as impressive on resumes.     Sometimes even when you are doing your best life seems to pass you by, doesn’t it?

     The other day I was talking about losing my “marbles” a little at a time.   That may be very true … but today I had a a magnificent brain epiphany!  (Or as a good old friend of mine from The Arc once said, “a wild hair up my brain storm”). 

     I’ve still been thinking a lot about how hard it is to remember everything these days.    Suddenly I realized it is because the rules have been changing my entire life!   I just get something learned and it all changes.    Electric typewriters were the tip of the iceberg of changes that would bombard us boomers from every side for the rest of our lives.      

     When we were in school we did math strictly by the use of our brains, a pencil, and sheets of paper that had to be turned in with our problems.    Our diplomas were barely in our hands when owning a calculator became a requirement of entering junior high school.     We were just getting the electric typewriter under our belts and word processors took over, leaving our archaic methods of using carbon paper to make multiple copies out to dry.    Get the picture?     We didn’t get the benefit of being taught to use the new equipment with peers in a school setting.   We learned when we made a purchase, took it home, got the directions out, and spent the next few years mastering it; usually not before it was outdated again.

     In the old days, once you learned reading and writing and arithmetic you were always in the know.    If you wanted to help your grand toddler with his math problems you were qualified.    Now days there is nothing that  brings the generation gap glaringly to the surface as quickly as trying to help grandchildren with their homework.    Heck, their own parents can’t even help them half the time, how would you expect a parent once removed to keep up?

    Pioneer women learned their chores when they were young girls.   They learned to sew, cook, clean, milk the cows, gather the eggs, bottle fruit, make soap … all hard stuff, I admit, but once they learned it they had the rest of their lives to perfect it so by the time they were grandparents their families sat around talking about how smart they were.    They could almost do it in their sleep.     They were the ones their children and grandchildren went to when they needed to learn the “ropes”.    Talk about backasswords!   Now it is me who has to go to the grandchildren to learn the “ropes”.   See what I’m talking about?   

    We haven’t been comparing apples to apples here!    The reason we feel like we are losing our marbles sooner than our ancestors did is because we have more marbles to lose.    Every five or so years of our adult lives the rules and equipment have been changed.      We have the same sized brains as our forefathers and mothers did but we have had to put a lot more stuff in them.    It stands to reason that eventually they’re going to start springing leaks.     

    We boomers are pretty smart!     We’ve adapted our entire lives.   We are the over achievers of adaptation.    If you can reach your arm far enough back, pat yourself on the shoulder, and then we can all sit together in front of our computer screens and rock back and forth while we chat about the good ole days.