Every once in a while, an old guy just has to be an old guy.
There are two ways to complain. One is complaining that things aren’t the way they once were, and the other is whining about the way things have become now.
They actually aren’t all that different except in subtle ways. I can remember how much nicer it was when the milkman delivered bottles of fresh milk every day. That’s the nostalgia part. Or I can complain about the way people are sloppy in the way they behave now.
So here goes:
— Once was the time very few people had tattoos. If someone did, they were usually in the military, either as an enlisted man or as a non-commissioned officer. If you ever saw “An Officer and a Gentleman,” Richard Gere’s character puts a bandage over his tattoo when he starts flight school, only to be told by the. drill sergeant who finds it that it shows he’ll never be an officer.
Even so, the folks who got tattoos usually just got one.
Not anymore.
First off, it’s very rare to see people with only one tattoo. So many people now have numerous tats and unless you can get them to stand still and let you look from up close, it’s very difficult to identify them.
In addition, while it used to be that most tattoos were concealed by clothing, now a large number of them are in obvious places.
Look at the middle picture on the lower half. This woman definitely wants everyone to see her ink.
My son has one small tattoo on his upper right arm. It’s a treble clef showing how much he loves music. Classy.
No one among my family or friends has any sort of tat, and I never had the desire to get one. The only person I know who had any was my daughter’s first husband, who had three or four. Of course, I don’t see him anymore.
— I have written before about being bothered by the fact that newspaper circulation is all but disappearing in favor of their websites. Papers that used to sell a million copies a day now sell only about a tenth that many.
I read several papers a day on my iMac or my iPhone, and as much as I hate to admit it, I am growing accustomed to it. As much as I wish I could still hold newspapers in my hands, I have to recognize that the more actual copies of the paper are printed, the more trees come down and the more trash winds up in landfills or in the. oceans.
Along the same lines, we created millions of pounds of trash when we switched from beer bottles to beer cans, cloth diapers to disposables and all sorts of other substitutions.
Of course, we can never go back. The volume of items sold has grown so much that there’s just no way to go back to reusables.
Only a few items, but that’s enough for now.