Societal Changes

My friend Barbara and I had our monthly meal together -- in July and August, we do dinner -- one Greek coffee shop diner/dinner and one nice dinner. Tonight was our nice dinner and it was a lovely evening.

We were talking about how major changes can take place over time, and talked specifically about smoking, about recycling -- I remember someone years ago scoffing, "What? Is everyone going to have three garbage cans?" And I always think of that when I see three garbage cans for recycling.

Neither of us enjoys cell phones and I pointed out to her the look on the face of a person when their dining partner is on the cell phone gabbing away. It's boredom with a pinch of impatience. I can't imagine why you'd want to chat when you're in a lovely restaurant trying to enjoy a dinner.

When I came home, I was sitting out on my steps for a while, and this woman whom I have come to know who lives on the block came by and pointed out to me that she was no longer on crutches and really was walking very well. I forgot how she had injured herself -- she is my age and a senior, senior flight attendant for American Airlines. She told me that now her only health challenge is solar keratosis which is a forerunner to skin cancer, but she was doing well with it.

She said to me it's all the time in the sun when she was young, and said that when she'd fly to Tucson, she and her fellow flight attendants would put on baby oil and fry themselves in the sun. It makes me cringe to think of that now, but that's what people did. I never did the baby oil since I always got dark so easily, and I remember when I first read that a tan is actually your skin defending itself from an injury and I was like HUH??

So that's something else that's changed -- tans are no longer cool. I remember what a status symbol it was to be tan in January in NY. It said you were well off enough to escape. Today you'd look foolish.

I wonder if the young girls frying themselves in tanning machines will think of themselves as foolish as they are nursing their own solar keratosis a few decades from now.