Friday, October 12, 2012

Dystopia, you can look it up

The year 1984 used to have a kind of sinister meaning. It represented a world created by George Orwell in 1949 to describe a future dystopia that featured mind control, perpetual war, doublethink, and a guy known as "Big Brother." Since we blew by that date and the dire predictions for the world of that time didn't come to pass, 1984 is just another regular year to look back on.  I look back on it with some nostalgia.

This photo was taken in 1984. I was 41 or 42 and acting a little silly with my son who would later take on the alias, Unky Herb. We were cutting the legs off a pair of jeans to make a pair of shorts and one of us thought the leftover pant legs would make a couple of nice hats. It may have been Herb.  Maybe me. But 1984 from this vantage point looks like quite a fine year.


Today I played tennis for the third straight day inside out of the wind and the marginal temperature. The transition to indoor tennis seems to be complete, but the specter of Indian Summer remains (Can I say Indian Summer?). We played at Fort Snelling - us four geezers. One was the guy from Arizona, Rich, who shows up once in a while and plays doubles with me for old time's sake. We played as a team again today, and I guess we can still hit some shots. Lobs stayed in, angle shots were unreturnable, and aces happened. We were in the zone for enough of the time to appreciate the ability to play this kids game yet again into our last year of this decade.  I think I must love this game.

These guys were born within 9 months of each other - some of the earliest baby boomers:
George W. Bush, July 6, 1946;
Bill Clinton, August 14, 1946;
Mitt Romney, March 12, 1947.
Also Mr Moohoo was born in that nine months period.  I find it interesting.  Maybe he should have run for president.

3 comments:

Gino said...

Nice hats.

I was aware of Bush and Clinton being very much my contemporaries. Part of this was because I was steered by societal and governmental forces into the US Army in 1969 while at that exact same moment Bush entered the Air National Guard and Clinton completely dodged with a flirtation with seminary and graduate school in England. I found the later explanations offered by BOTH of them to be extremely disingenuous (which is code for morally dishonest). I was there. I lived that reality. Neither one of the two was qualified on purely ethical considerations to be POTUS.

I continue to experience considerable disappointment that those two are forever more the representatives of my birth age in the history of the United States.

Jimi said...

Dan Quayle was born February 4, 1947. Another guy that comes from the same post war crop of infants.

Retired Professor said...

I remember both you and Unky Herb at those respective ages. (I come close to remembering you at the age Unky Herb was in 1984, but I digress.)

Indoor tennis sounds pretty good. I read Rich's blog about his son being in the marathon last week, while you and GZ were blogging about it. Small world. Sort of.

Nice post. Enjoy this last day of your 6th decade!