Every few
years there’s a
shudder that
runs down
society’s
spine. A tingling
numbness
that infiltrates
the culture,
waiting below the
surface.
With each
generation that
comes of
age, they discover
the new
outrage that their
parents
never even considered
to be something
to be concerned
about.
This new
outrage bends the
reeds of
previously accepted
normalcy to
the breaking point,
until they snap
with all the fury
of a bomb,
obliterating the reeds
beyond
recognition.
The slo-mo outrage
explosion ripples across
the social
landscape, uprooting
convention
and perceptions of
acceptability,
tossing every belief into
the air like
so many twigs on the
breeze.
“We didn’t
know,” scream the old guard,
as they
pinwheel through the mushroom
cloud of
outrage. Bonking their bodies
against the
rubble and debris swirling around
them. “We
didn’t know, we didn’t know,” they
cry.
“You should
have,” shouts the youthful cloud,
“you should have!” Their rage in a roiling
boil over
the perceptions of past generations,
“You should
have known!” They howl as they
beat their
breasts and chant for change.
“Your old
ways are done!”
The old
guard retreat into clumps as they
fall from
the sky, blankly looking at each other,
mystified by
what just happened.
They thought
they were doing so well.
They thought
they were doing such good.
They thought
it was under control.
The old, older
guard, stand on their porches,
and point
with their canes, “See, see…,”
they cajole,
“we told you it would happen to you,
damn hippies.”
The deposed wipe
their noses,
bloodied, but still they think they’re in
the fight.
They don’t know
it but their generational
bubble has
burst. It’s over, ended and
joined the choir
invisible, to be footnoted
by future
historians who’ll remark,
“Unbelievably,
people once acted this
way, much to
the chagrin of our current
social
morays.”
There’s no
change like the change that
makes
change. Except its very changing changes
how that change
will be changed.
I just convulsed
a little.
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