As the world changes
After over 50 years of writing this column and passing 80 years of life, it has dawned on me “I’m having a lot less foreign and domestic adventure for subject matter.”
Raising four kids once provided “human interest” topics, and I’ve been rereading a few. Take for example one written 40 years ago. Let’s see what Ostrom family life was like in March of 1972:
———
Iris Ann, my first wife, and I were calmly watching last Monday night’s TV movie, “The Blue Max.” Suddenly the handsome hero is in a bedroom with his general’s beautiful wife. She is only wearing a towel and a little eye makeup, and it looks like serious hanky-panky is in the air. That’s when I noticed our 13-year-old son quietly laying on the floor, all eyeballs. Can’t tell him to go to bed because he still has 10 minutes under house rules.
This is the first time in memory I ever watched the Monday night movie, so didn’t know what goes on there … or comes off. Now the hero starts pullin’ on the general’s wife’s towel. I leap from my chair and holler, “Shan! Did you finish your homework?”
He says, “Ah gosh, Dad! I wanna see what happens. He must really like her.”
I reply, “If you’d seen the first part you’d know everybody ‘really’ likes her. Now answer my question. Did you finish your homework?”
Shannon says, “No, but it isn’t due ‘til Friday.”
Now the hero is pulling harder on the generals’ wife’s towel and I quickly demand, “Show me the homework son.”
Fade out on TV for an Anacin commercial while I give young son lecture on the pitfalls of procrastination.
Movie comes back on and the hero is flying his plane across enemy lines, but it doesn’t matter now. Shannon is going to bed, and he nor his dad will never know what happened to the general’s wife’s towel during the Anacin commercial.
———
And that’s the way we were, 40 years ago.
Now! Up to date! Granddaughter Tana and great grandson Novio were up from Santa Cruz visiting us last Sunday. This time, little Novio didn’t throw living room stuff down the stairwell because “he is almost three.”
Completely beyond my understanding was demonstration of Tana’s “Android,” an electronic gizmo the size of a glasses case. She said it was mainly a telephone, but she took pictures of each of us then shook it. That changed our image to show how we’d look if we got very overweight. It was a jolt.
Got more scary after Tana said, “The Android is a ‘smart phone’ so knows everything about everything?” I immediately questioned that and told her, “I’ll bet it doesn’t know anything about me.”
She put the thing in front of her face and simply said, “George Ostrom Montana,” (I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP.) Within seconds, it showed pictures of me, told where I went to college, books I wrote, etcetra. If it knew what color shorts I wear, it was decent enough not to tell. The final mind-blowing shock of the whole experience came as a I scrolled through the data and came to an entry citing my column on Doctor Burns published “four days earlier.”
Any of you good readers of the Trailwatcher who might worry I will buy an “Android” and start spying on you, RELAX! Even with Tana helping, I couldn’t even learn … how to turn the dumb thing on.
G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.