Old School

I admit it.  I'm old school.

I miss film cameras and proof sheets and grease pencils.  I miss manners and punctuality and customer service.
I miss civility and nickle bus rides and integrity.  I miss common sense and proper grammar, letter writing and math pads, carrying a dime for a pay phone in an emergency, trusting the police.  I miss books and honesty in politics.  I miss the ethics of earning and hard work.  I'm not sorry I'll miss the future of what we've turned into and what we'll eventually make of the world.

The body in the park - a young woman, the news reported but mercifully didn't identify - was found early on a Thursday morning.  Sometime the night before, so the police thought, she had hung herself on the swing set, not an uncommon tragedy but in this case a fairly public one.  The neighborhood was shocked and stunned, her family devastated.  No one comprehends such things, how the world can turn so hard and cruel that there's no way out, how you can be victimized and overwhelmed by depression and fear and illness and isolation.  I hope she's found peace and reason on the other side.  If there is another side.  I can't help but wonder if she didn't find the world as I so often do - a sad and sorry excuse for a civilization - a place only good for leaving.

Most of us shake such feelings off and keep going, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time.  We have children or animals or friends depending on us.  We keep hope alive somehow and fight off the hard corners of despair with bright smiles and stubbornness.  We don't like being beaten at the game but we like giving up even less.  Parents should not have to bury their children, it's an offense, an upside down and twisted version of how things are supposed to be.

So we muddle on, no longer hoping for fairness or rewards, not even trying to understand how we got here or what here actually is.  It takes all we have to do the best we can and when we come up short, there's a swing set somewhere.

I'm old school.  I miss decency and kindness and a world where violence wasn't an answer and suicide wasn't a solution.

To the unidentified young woman in the park, rest in peace.