Can you believe it? Another year has come and gone. Our grandson is a bit taller and the new-car smell on our new car has faded away. My husband, The Brit, wondered how long that fragrance would last. I told him, “Only until one of you farts.” My money was on the Brit, but we foolishly allowed our grandson, Britween, to bring Honey the flatulent shih tzu, along. Driving with Honey is never a sweet ride.
Here at Waterman Manor, my Brit and I celebrated the New Year together while Britween enjoyed a sleep-over with friends. We kissed at midnight to the refrains of “Auld Lang Syne,” just as we do each year.
Ever wonder why that song is the anthem that parades in the New Year? The lyrics were written in 1788 by Scottish poet Robert Burns and set to an old Scottish folk song. That would explain its popularity with bagpipe players. The title, literally translated, means “old long since,” or more accurately stated, “old times sake.” Thank you, Wikipedia!
I could never remember the original words. However, the parody by the late comedian Allan Sherman is emblazoned on my brain forever: “I know a man, his name is Lang, and he has a neon sign. And Mister Lang is very old, so they call it Old Lang’s Sign.” Now there’s an anthem!
I recall listening to Big Band director Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians performing the song live from the ballroom of New York’s Waldorf Astoria every year since I was 4 years old. Mom would turn on the television and we’d count down the seconds as the ball dropped in Times Square. Lombardo was part of Mom’s New Year’s celebrations until he retired in 1976.
Poor Mr. Lombardo found himself competing with a younger, hipper crowd in 1973 when my pop culture hero, Dick Clark, began broadcasting his New Year’s Eve show in Times Square. Mr. Lombardo’s dreary-sounding, muted trumpets sorrowfully playing “Auld Lang Syne” were replaced in my living room by rocking tunes by Blood, Sweat & Tears, Three Dog Night, Al Green, and Helen Reddy. I am woman, hear me roar, Robbie Burns!
So much has changed since those slower-paced, halcyon days. Technological advances have sped up our lives to the point that no one even uses complete sentences or entire words to converse anymore. What am I saying? People rarely converse at all. Now they tweet and everything is an acronym. I have learned to decipher such mystic codes as LOL (laughing out loud) and BFF (best friends forever). I recently asked my grandson what the name of the band LMFAO meant. The Britween slowly shook his head and said, “Grandma, you don’t want to know.” He was right! Hey, wait a minute, how does he know? And what else does he know?
Technology isn’t the only thing that’s progressed so much that we are becoming more progressive. Watch television lately? I love situation comedies, and my first favorite was The Dick Van Dyke Show. Airing in the 1960s, Rob and Laura Petrie were America’s favorite married couple, even though they slept in twin beds.
That’s right, conjugal unions were barely even inferred until 10 years later on programs like Bob Newhart. Finally, a married couple like Bob and Emily could sleep in the same bed.
Fast-forward to 2014 and shows like Modern Family, which includes a gay couple who have an adopted Vietnamese daughter. We currently enjoy watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine in which Andre Braugher plays the captain of a police precinct and is gay. Gay relationships are no longer played out as “fairy tales,” and that is progressive!
I enjoy historic dramas and reveled in PBS programs like The Six Wives of Henry VIII and I, Claudius in the 1970s. The latter was most daring with its titillating glimpses of female anatomy.
Now unions, conjugal or not, are shown in detail, and I do mean detail. The Brit and I frequently glance over our shoulders to make sure 12-year-old Britween is in bed asleep before watching tapings of The Tudors on Showtime or any of the Spartacus series on Starz.
The soundtrack of my life has also changed. Each morning I listen to music as I drive our little man to school. I favor stations featuring Sinatra, Presley, and anything from the ’60s. Britween will plead with me, “Please, Grandma, can we listen to my station? I need to get pumped up for school.”
I grudgingly give in, fortified with a big cup of strong coffee, to the annoying, pounding sounds of Big Time Rush, Maroon 5, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga. Oh, I live for a pause, please a pause, a pause. Is a pause possible? Please be possible!
Of course, how can I judge my grandchild’s choice of music when I drove my own family crazy playing “She loves you! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” over and over again on my hi-fi? It seems like only yesterday. Was it really 50 years ago this year? How is that possible when I still get excited by the sound of Ringo’s infectious beat as John, Paul, and George belt out “I want to hold your hand!”
I recently watched several girls, ages 10 to 13, squeal in frantic ecstasy at the sight of five young men with funny-looking hair and foreign accents, members of an English-Irish group called One Direction. I could barely hear them singing with all the girls screaming at them.
Ha, I thought! I used to scream like that. But in my day we only had four British guys with funny hair and foreign accents to whip us all into a squealing, giggling, pre-teen hormonal frenzy.
This can only mean one thing: I have become older than I feel. Suddenly I fear that I have become what I thought Guy Lombardo was in 1973—an old fogey! Oh, my God! I mean OMG! I just used the term “old fogey!” I am feeling so uncool right now and that’s a bitter pill to swallow. Which reminds me, I need to take my pills.
Ariel Waterman refuses to take all these changes lying down. She is happy to sit quietly and sip her coffee. Please ask her editor, Ryan Miller, to remind her to take her pills at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 9-16, 2014.
