I remember...

From atop the Stoa this day, I sit, elbow to knee and hand to chin, thinking about continuity, time, people, events, and their places in our collective memories.

Rush Limbaugh made a great observation many years ago. He stated, basically, that "One's view of history begins with the year of their birth." Or something close to the effect.

He is right on. People always look to the times just around them to draw conclusions to a future that they can know nothing about. History was simply a stupid class in school that the teachers used to push modern environmental and socialist agendas, leaving out the context from virtually everything and ignoring that which would have been too difficult to fit into their templates.

I am a Gen-Xer. Born in 1969, several weeks before the moon landing. I don't remember that. I have vague remembrances of helicopters evacuating Saigon and sharper memories of burned out helicopters and decomposing bodies in the Iranian desert. I remember the landslide victory of Reagan in 1980.

I remember my father selling our broken boat to an out of work autoworker for a penny.

I remember my stern Grandfather on my mother's side who could keep the peace in the house by simply bending the corner of his newspaper over, fixing us all with his glare.

I remember him crying at the dinner table as death crept ever closer to him. I also remember his funeral.

I remember the Challenger exploding during launch. I was in High School and struck dumb with silence, as was everyone else around me.

I remember graduating from high school. It was a warm night. I spent time standing in the parking lot, talking to my other set of Grandparents.

I also remember each of their funerals as well.

I remember my first job. Washing dishes at a local restaurant. I remember my second job even more...heavy construction on the New Jersey shore during the height of summer.

I remember laying on a pontoon platform out in Lake Erie, late one night, with most of my childhood friends. It was our last night together and we all knew it. The moon was full and the sky was partly cloudy. We lay on the platform talking about life as we knew it then.

I've never been with more than one of them at a time since then.

I remember basic training in the US Army. The endless days and nights of discipline, regimentation, and fatigue. I am a far better man for having endured that experience.

I remember meeting my future wife for the first time. Language barrier or not, I was taken aback by how fiercely intelligent she was and how she effortlessly deflected the advances of one of my idiot friends.

I remember telling her some months later that she could not go back home since I told her we were going to be married.

Oh, how I remember so much. The birth of my children and the gray hair they give me on a regular basis.

Today I'll remember the day after the Supreme Court called ObamaCare a Tax. They essentially booted the issue back to Congress and told them to clean up their own mess. I have no faith in Congress to do the right thing.

Every one of us remembers things differently. Sometimes we remember the same thing differently from time to time. We are fallible like that. The strongest memories are always associated with the strongest emotions or pain. Back before computers and even books, events were passed from eldest to youngest and remembered. If a particularly important event took place, the elders would find the younger (not the youngest) among them, recount the event over and over, and then beat them severely. This would fix the memory of the event and when it happened firmly in their minds.

9/11 was like that for many. So was the shooting of Reagan and the killing of JFK for my parents. Pearl Harbor for my Grand Parents (GI Generation). The Stock Market crash and WWI for my shadows, the Lost Generation.

What will my children remember? Will I be that grumpy old man who has to put down his archaic iPad to glare at my son's or daughter's children making too much noise in the living room?

I hope so.

Live well,

Zavost