A friend of mine seemed to realize that I needed some happiness/humour in my life. He sensed correctly and sent me the following “feel-good message.”
You are 83 years old! You belong to a special group born between 1930 and 1946; a 16-year range. This group is now between the age of 76 to 92. This is you – you are “still here.”
Are you, or do you know someone, “still here?” You were born in 1939.
Interesting facts for you:
– you are the smallest group of children still alive born since the early 1900s;
– you are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war that rattled the structure of our daily lives for years;
– you are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves;
– you saved tin foil and poured fried meat fat into tin cans;
– you can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch;
– you are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio;
– with no TV until the 1950s, you spent your childhood playing outside;
– the lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world was like;
– Internet and Google were words that did not exist;
– newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on your radio in the evening;
– telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines), and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy);
– typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon;
– you weren’t neglected, but you weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus;
– they were glad that you played by yourself;
– you came of age in the ‘50s and ‘60s;
– you are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland;
– you are “the last ones” – more than 99 per cent of you have passed; and
– you grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better.
You are privileged to have “lived in the best of times.”
I thank my friend; I do feel better already. It’s great being part of this one per cent special group.
And, life does go on.
***
Bob Murray is retired from the graphic communication (printing) industry and has been living in Seaforth since 2015. Murray was diagnosed with Dementia in 2013 and works hard to stop the progress of the disease to AD. He shares his experiences in his column entitled “My Voyage with Dementia.” Follow him on his blog entitled Voyage with Dementia – https://myvoyage553264702.wordpress.com.
