old | Unmotherly Insights

I hate to sound like an old crotchety woman but WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY??? Let me start by saying that back in the day, I could ring a pretty efficient register. I could key in items, add tax, note which items were tax free, and here’s the best part; I could figure out how much change the customer was due and count it back to them properly and politely. There were no computerized cash registers to tell us ringers how much money to return and because of that, we could actually figure it out in our heads, make sense of it and count it back to the paying party.

Let’s contrast this with today. Last week I was at a certain Christian hobby store and my bill came to $21.52. I was holding a twenty dollar bill and a five dollar bill. I hadn’t yet handed them to the cashier. She, however, took it upon herself to ring in $25.00. But as I continued to dig around in my wallet, I found a single and .52 cents. I said, “Here you go,” and handed the young lady $26.52. The look on her face was sheer panic. She began to stutter and I feared she might shortly hyper-ventilate.

“Are you okay?” I inquired with serious concern. “I…I… I…already rang it in,” she said.
“Well, that’s okay,” I spoke as if I were coaxing a would-be jumper from a very high ledge. “You just need to give me a five dollar bill and we’re good to go.” Unfortunately, this continued to baffle my young friend. All color had drained from her countenance. “I…can’t do that,” she stammered. “I need to give you the change from the $25 I rang in.”

I thought about explaining that I didn’t really want four dollars and .48 cents shuffling about in my wallet, and that I had actually simplified the equation by supplying her with the extra $1.52. But since there was a long line of religious crafters behind me, I chose to simply give her the $25 dollars and move on with my life. After all, WWJD?

But this kind of event is occurring more and more frequently. Yesterday I stopped in one of my favorite bath stores. I ended up spending $32.25. I happen to have been carrying a $100 bill that I wanted to change into something smaller, so I paid with the bill and a shiny new quarter. Once again, panic ensued. The young gal behind the counter stood there stunned, looking at me as if I had handed her Rubles or Euros or Yen. After what felt like an inordinate amount of time she called for a manager to check the validity of my hundred and asked what she should do with the extra quarter I’d supplied. Luckily the manager, a ripe 30 something, keyed in the precise amount and the register responded that the customer was due the exact sum of $68. The sales girl then grabbed some cash from the drawer in a haphazard manner and dumped a wad of cash into my palm.

Gone are the days of counting back change to a customer so that she knows she is, in fact, receiving the correct amount of cash return. But seriously, how do you know you are getting the appropriate amount of change? I mean, computers do make errors, as do impulsive youth. I carefully counted back my change in front of the young woman, hoping that perhaps I could teach her by example a more appropriate way of delivering change to a paying consumer. She merely looked at me with annoyance for delaying the other customers behind me in line.

Look, I have no problem with the fact that all salespeople appear to be under the age of 15. Likewise, I’m not one of those people who walks down a hospital corridor wondering why all the doctors barely look old enough to drive. I appreciate that we are a young, vital society and that the youth are the future of our great nation. But there really is a need for young people to be able to do basic arithmetic in their heads and if we are to be a capitalist society, people need to understand how to count money, make change and respect the purchasing process.

There, I’ve said it. Now I’m going to sit in my rocker, crank up the phonograph and enjoy turning on and off the lights with my Clapper.

Jack Johnson at Cricket Pavilion last week

You know those moments when you’re suddenly, and painfully, aware of how old you are? Well, they’re coming more frequently these days and let me say, they suck! My most recent realization came Sunday night at the Jack Johnson concert at Cricket Pavilion. I know, it’s just asking for embarrassment to go to a rock concert as a middle aged mother of two. But we really like Jack Johnson. So we forged ahead, certain that there would be a healthy representation of baby boomers and gen-xers mixed into the youthful audience melange.

We’ve actually gone to several concerts this year. We saw Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in Prescott this winter. It was part of their Arts Center season and we were by far the youngest in the audience. Then we went to Vegas to see Garth Brooks. Yes, I admit it. I LOVE HIM! But there too, there was a plentiful number of, shall we say, mature audience members.

Last night I felt like that old brown banana in the fruit bowl, you know the one nobody will eat because it’s too mushy. It just sits there forever, until you bring home a new bunch of hard green ones from the store and finally decide to toss it or use it as compost.

It started when we got there a bit before 7. Well, that’s what time our tickets said the concert began. Can you say “out of touch?” We actually told our sitter that we’d be home around 10 thinking three hours was more than enough time for a thorough sampling of Jack’s greatest hits. We were a bit surprised by the plethora of empty seats surrounding us. Finally, after 2 hours of warm up bands, we remembered that stars like Jack Johnson don’t open their own shows. The wise youngsters in the house arrived a few moments before 9:30 when Jack finally stepped onto the stage. We seriously contemplated going home before he even began. Life is definitely more limiting when you wake up between 4 and 5 a.m. every morning.

We were happy we stayed. The concert was amazing. We even spotted a few families with young kids in the pit. That helped soften the sight of thousands of college coeds spreading out in all directions. And I guess we should be happy that not a single one asked us to buy them an adult libation, an act I remember performing on several occasions when I was a mere underage student looking for an alcohol buzz.

But my question is this: why does life have to stop when you hit middle age? Why weren’t there more people in our age bracket at this concert? His music is mostly mellow, has a great message, is beautifully arranged and artistically impressive. Why don’t middle aged people go to concerts? They’re fun. You get to dance and sing and let go for a few hours. That’s got to be healthy. I feel like we all run around tied up in knots, worrying about our work, our kids, our finances. It gets old, and so do we. We need to have more fun.

That’s it. I’m starting a red hat club for middle agers. Only we’re gonna wear togas, one of our generation’s most identifiable party icons, as an homage to John Belushi and “Animal House.” We will stop feeling out of place at nightclubs, poetry slams and concert venues. We will eat at “beautiful people” restaurants, and buy our way into VIP back rooms at all of the hottest clubs in town. We will play frisbee on the beach, drink more than we ought to, and gulp down a few Red Bulls to get through the work days after our wild and exotic nights of debauchery. We will make-out in public, show our bellies, pierce our noses. Middle agers of America, join with me in taking back fun. After all, we invented it in the first place, didn’t we?