Moving Around

According to statistics, the average person moves 11 times during their life. They jack that number up some if you are, or were, in the military.

I beat the average. I have lived in 28 separate houses, apartments or dorms in my life, and being in the military did add quite a few to that total, but almost half of those, 12, were before I left Loudon. We moved a lot! Part of that revolved around Mom and where, and if, she was working. She mostly worked as a waitress and I think she worked at every café in town at one time or another, plus she made a few trips to Atlanta to try and find work. We moved down there with her once, but the other times we moved in with my grandparents, but I’m not sure why they moved around.

I think at one time or another I lived in most parts of town, but never outside the city limits. In fact, for a couple of years we lived almost right downtown. There’s a bank there now, just across from the First Baptist Church.

Five of them were in the vicinity of Hospital Hill and three others were around Reservoir Hill. For some reason we gravitated to high places.

It at least let me have a fairly large group of friends, and I probably lived within a stone’s throw of 50% of the senior class at one time or another.

So moving can have advantages I guess, but you don’t get to set down a really good set of roots, and that would have been very nice to have.

Let's Dance

Do you remember your first dance?  I don't.  It must have been sometime during high school, or maybe 7th or 8th grade, because before that I wouldn't have been interested at all.  The reason I ask is that I'm going to let you ladies in on a secret.  We knew how bad we were at dancing, even if we acted like we were the second coming of Fred Astaire..

I know that when you saw us approach you at the begining of a slow song you thought something like, "Uh-oh, here he comes now.  Why did it have to be a slow song?  He's probably going to stand too close."  Okay, so I paraphrased it some.  I'm not a girl, but I've seen that look in their eyes, not exactly like they dread it but maybe a little like the hot dog they just ate isn't quite agreeing with them.

Well, let me tell you, it wasn't all peaches and cream for us guys either.  Well, most of us anyway.  We couldn't dance a lick, not a lick,  and the very last thing we wanted to do was look dorky in front of the other people, especially the girls we might asking to dance later on and our buddies who were going to give us hell when the dance was over.

Our thought process was more like, "Oh God, she looks scared.  I know she's going to say no. Do I look that bad?  Please don't let me step on her feet.  I hope the guys ain't looking.  Oh man, she knows I'm going to stink at this.  Stink?!?!  Oh God, do I smell?  I don't think so.  Maybe I used too much  after shave.  Is she going to laugh?  Why does everybody have to be watching us?  Can she feel me shaking?  Do I talk?  What about?"

So there it is.  The two things that gave us the biggest fit during that time in our lives.  Dealing with girls and dancing.  Most of us were bad at both.

What's Next?

I read an article in a magazine once that said a medical company was a little irritated when Star Trek, way back in the 60s, showed the doctor using a device that he simply waved over the patient and got an instant diagnosis. It seems the device had some similarities to something they had in development. I’m not sure how close their product was to what was shown on Star Trek, but I haven’t seen anything like it when I go to the doctor so I guess their device never made it out of development.

Along the same lines, I read another article that said a company was developing a 360 degree hologram projector. It beamed the image down from the ceiling and your spot in the room determined what you saw, very much like a round stage. I haven’t seen that one yet either.

Which brings me to my question; based on what we’ve seen change in the world in the past 40 years, what do you think will be changing next?

There were computers and magazines like Popular Mechanics would put out issues about the house and car of the future. They didn’t say much about phones, as I recall other than we would have video, sort of like a Dick Tracy video watch, although I think Chet Gould was closer to what the size would be than the magazine was.

Our cars are close to what some of the magazines guessed they would be, but nobody saw GPS coming. I don’t think they saw satellite radio coming either, not to mention CDs and DVDs.

So what’s coming?

In clothing, I don’t think much. I mean styles have changed, but nothing really drastic and jeans today are basically the same jeans our grandparents had, except their jeans became faded and holey from wearing them. They didn’t get them faded and holey straight off the rack, and for that matter, neither did we.

Electronics will continue to evolve and everything will eventually be one device. Phone, radio, computer, TV and anything else they can think of putting into one. Very much like the smart phones now, but a lot smaller. No bigger than an ear bud.

I think the biggest changes will be in energy and our food supply. We get there quicker, easier and more economically and within a couple of generations a lot of the foods we eat now will be gone.

I also think families will limit themselves to one maybe two kids, and a lot of them will choose not have any.

I also think nothing will change in politics and world affairs. Everyone will still be griping at each other.

Hopefully, this old world can find a way to keep going on for many more generations, but I don’t think they will have it as good as we did/do.