No Time for Small Talk

 Of course it's now true that most people are communicating with their phones rather than in person. But  the absence of in-person conversation  is even more apparent for those of advanced age, i.e. the elderly as we are known. Since my childhood and youth, and then early years of maturity, I would often be invited by older community members to "sit and chat," with them, whether in the village library, the neighborhood store, or on  their front porches. And that was easy enough and the polite thing to do, and almost all of those requests for a chat were occasions for those senior citizens to recount the events remembered from their past. Many of those conversations became familiar to me because the narrator tended to repeat the  familiar significant treasured memories from their youth.

 That was then and, in the now, everything has changed. As is inevitable. Think Leonard Cohen's words in song, "All my friends are gone and my hair is gray..." When your friends and contemporaries are indeed gone from your life, it is a surety that there will not be a young, or younger, set of ears willing to listen to you recount your past triumphs or woes. Move on, is the message, as in being told you're repeating yourself, or being reminded of irrelevancies. 

But connections to the past and present are inevitable, and who knows, maybe a link to preserving mental acuity. 

  Personal  case in point:  yesterday was a day of a procedural action, September 17, 2025.  I remember that we, my sister and I, started college on September 17, so many years ago, but the memory lives on. As I recall, there was little or no communication between the time when we received our acceptance letters and the date we were told to report to campus. At the mandated Compulsory Convocation, the entire class was required to attend and hear the Dean advise us that we were the largest class ever admitted, over 300 students, and that the class size would be reduced by semester's end, by one-third. "Look to your right', he said, and "Look to your left. One of you will not be here by January."  I looked and saw Dorothy on my right and Ruth on my left. A shiver went through me. We had all passed the rigorous entrance tests but I knew my sister was more proficient at studying and my friend was more ambitious and adaptable, so I figured I'd be the one leaving.  But there is no place in my world for this type of memory, even though it arises unbidden, (except for you, Dear Blog.)  As is true of so many other memories or views best left unspoken. We'll see about unwritten. 

 I have seen, many times over, in different capacities, it seems the come-on hook, "Always carry a bread-clip in your wallet."  I deliberately ignored reading why scores of times, but in a moment of weakness one day, opened the site for the wisdom. Now I know why I should carry that bread clip, but no one wants to hear, or talk about it. 

Even adding this to my own blog could be  a Jimmy Kimmel transgression.I suppose.