Love
“Then comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in the baby carriage…”
If only it were that simple.
Society has condemned generation x, or is it generation y, for their lackadaisical attitude, their laissez faire approach to life, their come what may sense of self. Can you blame them? Can you blame these x’ers, or y’ers as they may be, for the optimism they seek in the midst of the reality of a not-so-bright world.
True, in the time of “Leave it to Beaver,” it may have been that simple. Wally only needed ask out Betty Sue on Friday night and three episodes later, they were going steady, her necklace showing off his class ring, that binding agreement between the two of them that served both as a notice of possession and a chokehold. Wally found love, through his definition of it. Betty Sue saw June and Ward - she knew that love was not far off with Old Wal.
But what about the Beaver? In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions…the Beav was not a princess, a basketcase, a jock, a geek, or a social misfit. Beav didn’t fit the definition, and in turn, the definition didn’t fit him. Beav could not follow the linear graph through the third quadrant up to the first. He always had a negative slope.
Years later, when the reunion specials aired (ahh. It was the ‘80’s wasn’t it? Time of excess. Excess. Ex’s.) the viewer, having traded in her bobby socks for a full time job as an “executive assistant” with the “gift” to also take care of her children, found that the Beav too had somehow found that linear path. Beav had even taken it a step further. Beav had gone beyond the baby carriage and come full circle to the beginning, to embody the inverse of what his parents had stood for.
The Beav, yes, “Jerry Mathers as the Beaver,” was divorced.
Perhaps that is why many x’ers are now asking y? Why love if even the Beav is divorced?
Because
You
Have to.
They hear it from their friends. They will be happier if they are in “love.” Love being a term that can at one moment be put on like a down jacket and the next discarded like that piece of gum, you know the gum, that piece on the bottom of your shoe that’s been there for awhile. It was once pink, or blue, maybe even green. But now, it’s brown, it’s filled with dirt and it’s stuck on your shoe. You feel it as you walk - it obscures your every step for days, weeks, months…until it gets to that point. You know the point, the point when you must sit down, grab a stick and poke at that pesky gum until it is permanently detached from your not-so-new pair of Converse.
Such is love.
Love requires the stick to poke at it, to pry it away once it has become too much, once the distraction has overwhelmed even the most tolerant of the shoe wearing public. The gum is now twofold: it is both stuck to the stick that dislodged it, and it is waiting, on the ground, in the grass. It is waiting for that new shoe, that steel toed black pair of Doc Marten’s to pick it up. And yet, part of it is forever, indelibly linked with the stick. The stick removed it, brought it pain, and yet, the gum remains loyal, steadfast, firm. A piece will always remain.
Why? Because that’s what gum does.
The gum now has a new mission, one not as impossible as those the Tom Cruise pretty boys master. The mission, should the gum choose to accept it, is to remain unnoticed by the Doc Marten - to stay forever, never to meet another stick, ruler, or knife.
Such is love.
The new gum-flavored love, both minty fresh and amazingly powerful, has set a new goal, a new idealism. This gum just wants to hitch a ride. The gum has idealized the shoe, seeing it as the only way out of the situation. It is either attach itself to a shoe, or remain there forever, squashed to the ground, forever, losing flavor, losing color. A remnant of what it once was.
That is the view of the older generation of gum - that gum that only came in three flavors: the wintergreen, the spearmint, the cinnamon. This was the gum before it came with flavor crystals. The new, the polar ice gum, can be content on the ground.
For the ground offers a new perspective for the gum. Sure, it gets stepped on once in a while. But, each foot is never the same. Each shoe, each foot, from the wide hairy Barney Rubble feet, to the forever perched Barbie foot, offers the gum a different experience. The gum does not need to attach, but can remain there, in place, experiencing all and yet, retaining all. It does not lose a part to the stick. There is no need for a stick if there is no ‘sticking’ in the first place.
The only other option for the gum is to remain in the package - to never experience either the ability to be chewed up, or the pain of being spit out or scraped off. The wrapper, the impenetrable force, has been set up for its own protection. However, it takes someone else to unwrap, to bring to danger.
Whatever the case, the gum has no real force of its own.
It can remain. It can never exit the package. It can be forever poked and prodded off. Yet, for some reason, the gum the never dies.
It never dies.
If only it were that simple.
Society has condemned generation x, or is it generation y, for their lackadaisical attitude, their laissez faire approach to life, their come what may sense of self. Can you blame them? Can you blame these x’ers, or y’ers as they may be, for the optimism they seek in the midst of the reality of a not-so-bright world.
True, in the time of “Leave it to Beaver,” it may have been that simple. Wally only needed ask out Betty Sue on Friday night and three episodes later, they were going steady, her necklace showing off his class ring, that binding agreement between the two of them that served both as a notice of possession and a chokehold. Wally found love, through his definition of it. Betty Sue saw June and Ward - she knew that love was not far off with Old Wal.
But what about the Beaver? In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions…the Beav was not a princess, a basketcase, a jock, a geek, or a social misfit. Beav didn’t fit the definition, and in turn, the definition didn’t fit him. Beav could not follow the linear graph through the third quadrant up to the first. He always had a negative slope.
Years later, when the reunion specials aired (ahh. It was the ‘80’s wasn’t it? Time of excess. Excess. Ex’s.) the viewer, having traded in her bobby socks for a full time job as an “executive assistant” with the “gift” to also take care of her children, found that the Beav too had somehow found that linear path. Beav had even taken it a step further. Beav had gone beyond the baby carriage and come full circle to the beginning, to embody the inverse of what his parents had stood for.
The Beav, yes, “Jerry Mathers as the Beaver,” was divorced.
Perhaps that is why many x’ers are now asking y? Why love if even the Beav is divorced?
Because
You
Have to.
They hear it from their friends. They will be happier if they are in “love.” Love being a term that can at one moment be put on like a down jacket and the next discarded like that piece of gum, you know the gum, that piece on the bottom of your shoe that’s been there for awhile. It was once pink, or blue, maybe even green. But now, it’s brown, it’s filled with dirt and it’s stuck on your shoe. You feel it as you walk - it obscures your every step for days, weeks, months…until it gets to that point. You know the point, the point when you must sit down, grab a stick and poke at that pesky gum until it is permanently detached from your not-so-new pair of Converse.
Such is love.
Love requires the stick to poke at it, to pry it away once it has become too much, once the distraction has overwhelmed even the most tolerant of the shoe wearing public. The gum is now twofold: it is both stuck to the stick that dislodged it, and it is waiting, on the ground, in the grass. It is waiting for that new shoe, that steel toed black pair of Doc Marten’s to pick it up. And yet, part of it is forever, indelibly linked with the stick. The stick removed it, brought it pain, and yet, the gum remains loyal, steadfast, firm. A piece will always remain.
Why? Because that’s what gum does.
The gum now has a new mission, one not as impossible as those the Tom Cruise pretty boys master. The mission, should the gum choose to accept it, is to remain unnoticed by the Doc Marten - to stay forever, never to meet another stick, ruler, or knife.
Such is love.
The new gum-flavored love, both minty fresh and amazingly powerful, has set a new goal, a new idealism. This gum just wants to hitch a ride. The gum has idealized the shoe, seeing it as the only way out of the situation. It is either attach itself to a shoe, or remain there forever, squashed to the ground, forever, losing flavor, losing color. A remnant of what it once was.
That is the view of the older generation of gum - that gum that only came in three flavors: the wintergreen, the spearmint, the cinnamon. This was the gum before it came with flavor crystals. The new, the polar ice gum, can be content on the ground.
For the ground offers a new perspective for the gum. Sure, it gets stepped on once in a while. But, each foot is never the same. Each shoe, each foot, from the wide hairy Barney Rubble feet, to the forever perched Barbie foot, offers the gum a different experience. The gum does not need to attach, but can remain there, in place, experiencing all and yet, retaining all. It does not lose a part to the stick. There is no need for a stick if there is no ‘sticking’ in the first place.
The only other option for the gum is to remain in the package - to never experience either the ability to be chewed up, or the pain of being spit out or scraped off. The wrapper, the impenetrable force, has been set up for its own protection. However, it takes someone else to unwrap, to bring to danger.
Whatever the case, the gum has no real force of its own.
It can remain. It can never exit the package. It can be forever poked and prodded off. Yet, for some reason, the gum the never dies.
It never dies.