Back in My Day ....

Somebody sent me one of those stupid "I was born before indoor plumbing and in my day ...." emails that purports to shock with its revelations of how much American society had devolved in some asshole's relatively short lifetime - usually around 50 years.

Putting aside that most of the modern conveniences the asshole claims to be older than are actually far older than he realizes (indoor plumbing, of course, having been invented by the Romans about 2,300 years ago), let's see what happens when I make myself the subject of "back in my day" nostalgia.

I was born after:

• microwave ovens
• computers
• Sputnik
• the first American advisors in Vietnam
  

And yet, I remember:

• segregated toilets, restaurants and schools for "coloreds." Who were not allowed to vote.
• homosexuality was never mentioned, much less discussed. Especially not at the funerals of gay suicides.
• child abuse and wife-beating were ubiquitous but ignored, because the victims deserved it.
• working women were fired for getting pregnant - working married women.
• non-christians need not apply - for anything.
  

In my half-century of life, the biggest changes I have seen are the extension of civil and human rights to non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-Xian people.

I have no nostalgia for the racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic, Nixonian nightmare of my childhood.

That racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, homophobic, wingnut freakazoid assholes do is tough shit for them. That they are less comfortable in this world is one of the things I like best about it.

Except for the music. I miss the music.