The Golden Age

I think every major civilization has a “golden age”. It’s already there as far back as Homer (The Greek poet, not Marge’s Husband). In the past, things were better: men were braver, women more beautiful…Maybe it’s because wisdom and stories used to be told by the elders who (inaccurately) remembered being young and how wonderful it all was, all of the time.

I guess for my age group we’d have to pick the 1970s, but, by definition, a golden age cannot contain ABBA and Disco.

I remember being young and a lot of it was good and a lot of it was crap.

I remember a youthful body and if I really strain hard, I can remember having hair on my head. I also remember family members using words like “Nigger”, “Paki” and “fruit” at the dinner table. (I am composing this in Microsoft Word and the first two words pass the spell checker – isn’t that interesting). Some of them still use those words.

When I heard the first “Paki” joke I had to get clarification: “Do you mean people from Pakistan?” I wanted to make sure I was hating the correct people, not that it was difficult – anyone who’s skin tone, religion or sexual orientation differed from my own was on that list anyway. Good thing I never ran into a Chinese Protestant Lesbian – I would have had to stab her on the spot!

We were reading Shakespeare in Grade 9 – the bard used the word “chink” and we asked the teacher, I am not kidding here, what was a Chinese person was doing in a wall in Elizabethan England? Well, it turns out that word could also mean a part of a wall that had a crack in it. Well, that replaced fart and masturbation jokes for a few weeks when we could say “chink” and get away with it!!! “Hey Man do you have a chink in your locker?”

I think some people like their golden age so much they live there forever. What the hell does that mean? I mean, emotionally. So many people who are well into their 30s or older have that same grade 9 sense of humour and have not developed past that point.

I think I had more of a pewter age myself. If we could weed out Disco and ABBA, maybe it could be as good as bronze.

Thomas