Party Smarty

I hope that everyone is in a sharp frame of mind to read this today, coming as it does the day after the big event, i.e the solar eclipse. It doesn’t even matter if people can really see it or not. It’s an opportunity to set aside the mundanity of their lives and have some kind of celebration, however questionable it may be about whether the event qualifies. This is the way humans are, or at least it’s how they’ve been for the past half century. Before that, it’s difficult to say with any degree of accuracy, not that I’ll let that impede my speculation.

It seems that people born before the 1940’s tended to live their lives based on responsibility. They worked when they should and played only when they could. They probably celebrated certain holidays as well as birthdays, but there was no Super Bowl, no Oscar Parties, and no one said Happy ____ with the day of the week inserted into the phrase. Don’t you want to punch people who say “Happy Tuesday” with a big smile on their puss? Forced joy angers me. It’s also true that people didn’t walk around telling everyone that they were depressed or feeling anxious. That was just how life was. Sometimes you were sad. Sometimes you were jumpy. You did your work, you took care of your family, and you shut the hell up.

I do have my mother’s stories to fall back on. She grew up in the late 30’s and early 40’s, during the Great Depression. Her parents worked all week, but on Saturday nights they would break out the instruments. The family would sing and play (mom was an accomplished accordionist) and record their sessions onto shellac 78 RPM platters. That was the extent of their celebrations. On Sunday morning, it was back to work. We can’t seem to go an entire month without something to make us artificially happy. It’s always National Something Day or International Something Else Week. The entire month of March is dedicated to college basketball and the partying that accompanies it. Once upon a time, pro football was just on Sunday afternoons. Then it expanded to Monday nights, Sunday nights, and now it’s on more days of the week than it isn’t, and every game is an “event.” That’s another word that has been subject to massive hyperbole. TV episodes are referred to as events, as are movies, documentaries, and a Wednesday baseball game in the middle of a 162-game season.

You see, we’re always trying to escape our lives. That’s what vacations are for, right? A long time ago, a friend of mine who was dissatisfied with his life mused about moving down south. I told him that he’d be the same miserable bastard there as he was here. You can’t get away from yourself. That doesn’t mean we can’t try really hard, though. Many of our fellow humans planned well in advance to be at a site where they could see the total eclipse yesterday. They rented hotel rooms, they traveled for hours, they bought themselves a pair of sunglasses to shield their eyes. They probably overpaid for food. I hope that it made them happy, even though it’s only temporary.

My generation and the ones immediately before and after have all grown up on leisure, distraction, and escape. We have video game systems in our homes that would put the state-of-the-art machines that inhabited 1980’s arcades to shame. Our TV screens are approaching the size of the movie screens of our youth. We have mobile computers that we carry with us everywhere and they’re packed full of things to entertain us. And we’re always looking for a reason to party. What’s perplexing is how many people are convinced, despite all of this, that their lives suck and that things used to be so much better. Part of it is a trick of the brain. We used to be young and attractive (some of us, anyway) and had the world on a string. Probably our parents were still alive and vital. We didn’t have a care in the world. Of course the past seems better. But there’s no cause to fret. There should be some reason to celebrate coming up any day now. Isn’t it almost National Popsicle Day?