Push Button Generation

I was getting changed into my gym kit when an old boy came into the changing room and asked, "Has anybody seen a wallet?" He was white haired, lost looking as Gordon Campbell.

"Was it a black one?" a young guy, getting changed the same time I was, asked.

The old boy perked up. "It is."

The young guy told him, "It was on the ground just outside the change room. I gave it to the girls at the front desk."

The old boy thanked the young man for his integrity about ten times and went to retrieve his wallet. The young people of Steepleton are like that. We may live in desperate times, but that does not mean you have to act desperate, stealing some old motherfucker's wallet.

After the young guy had left the old boy returned to finish changing himself. He was as relieved as an innocent man released from prison. Nobody likes to go home to their old dear and explain how they lost their wallet.

We got to talking.

The old boy had some stories to tell. War, cougar attacks, hockey riots and various other near death experiences common to the generations that preceded my own. The old boy had lived some.

Could be today's Push Button Generation will have some stories to tell when they get old and start losing their wallets in the gym. I kind of doubt it. My own generation, that part of it which coveted near death experiences anyhow, did its best to gather up the life experience necessary to tell good stories in our lawn bowling years but there was no World War to get in our way, no back forty to encounter cougars in and just one decent hockey riot to get involved in.

Learn something from your elders, motherfuckers: it is life and life only. Let it fucking rock.