As it Were

            “So I was all like, yeah. And she was all like, whatever,” said the teenage girl I passed on the street.

            “For serious,” said the other teenage girl.

            “I’m totally texting her,” said the first teenage girl.

            “OMG Bitch, riiiiGHt,” asked the second teenage girl.

            I turned my head to look back at these two girls who were furiously texting. I was reminded that these girls weren’t too unlike the girls I once knew, except the girls of my generation had to write out their messages via paper and pass it around to the other girls in the class room. And if it was summer, forget it. You’d never even hear if there was a problem. Although I’m pretty sure some of those girls could hold a monster grudge all summer and unleash it the first day school was back in session or when they bumped into each other at the school carnival near the Nauseator.

            You remember the Nauseator, that ride with the terrible 80’s hair band rock blasting out through cheap speakers overhead. It was like a mini-roller coaster that just went in seriously fast circles past murals of snow wizards and scantily clad barbarian women. The whole ride smelled like burnt popcorn throw-up and children’s tears. It was run by that one carnie that knew where to score the “good” H. He’d hit on the youngest and likely the least dressed girls, offering them a “free ride”. I think he’s a Senator now.

            I recently made a reference to a young cousin of mine about women’s liberation. She was fiercely defending her desire to be left alone when she got to college and didn’t want any excessive visits from family. I said that she wanted her independence, to be a Mary Tyler Moore as it were. She looked at me blankly, not having the slightest clue about Mary Tyler Moore or what she represented during the age of Women’s Lib. My young cousin never lived through a time when women were just asserting themselves in the workplace. For her, Women’s Liberation is something she’ll hear about in her woman studies course.

            I often wonder about Women’s Liberation. I say this only because of my continued use of internet dating sites. It would seem that there are a lot of women between the ages of 25 and 30 with excessive tattooing and facial piercings. I am a man lost in time when I see that. I never really “got” the whole body modification thing. I thought about getting a tattoo, but I could never find anything that appealed to me in any real way. So I’m inkless and I’m fine with it. These young women though, with huge tattoos over the tops of their breasts, extending up and over their shoulders, to their necks and onto their backs, with rings through their noses and sparkling studs in their cheeks has me completely miffed. The word demure is one lost to history I guess. It would seem every young woman has embraced the empowerment their foremothers worked for and have blasted off into the stratosphere, without in some cases, knowing anything about their foremothers. I’m sure there are plenty that do know what MTM stood for and others like her and they are simply expressing themselves as individuals and I have no qualms with that. You go, girl.

            I’m sure I’ll see a few of these young women over the coming Independence Day holiday. By the way, it isn’t much of a Holiday when you have to work the day after your nation celebrates its independence from tyranny. What’s that about ‘Merica? I remember the Fourth of July as one of those super kick-ass holidays when it seemed like summer would go on forever and lighting those Black snake fireworks on fire and watching them grow on the sidewalk was quite possibly the coolest thing ever in the history of everything. It was a contest to see which Black snake would grow the longest. (Hm, it would seem that’s still a contest between most men). As kids, we’d run around like bat-shit crazy monkey’s with our sparklers, waving them around like lunatics as Uncles drunk with beer and fire and beer would light ever more dangerous fireworks. (When you could still buy them in Illinois).

            Those two teenage girls really sent me on a rant today. I should text them to thank them for this meandering riga-ma-roll.

            “Whatever.”