Gene Bernard

I suppose I've reached that time in my life where my peers, the people around me start their deriding of the generation behind us. Perhaps it's the new decade, but they use adult words and idioms to do it and ask how do we...countervail, how do we...stem the tide? Discussions of hells and handbaskets ensue.

I realize this is a generational imperative and for the newest generation there is so little for us to latch onto, you know, in terms of what excites them that is relatable to us. I drove around the country last summer and at proverbial dinner tables across America not a gathering went by in which the majority present (ages 30-80) didn't somehow express their dismay and confusion about Facebook and Twitter and often through the same folksy jokes about it. Its uses are unknown to them and therefore nefarious.

(An aside: I do want to note that at each of these dinners I went to over this past year, when the topic turned to technology and the Luddite chorus warmed the celestial air in the space before dessert and coffee, there was always one codger waiting in the conversational wings to unload the knowledge he or she had about Twitter or Facebook or whatever. He or she'd wait in silence and let the discussion play itself out and then, like the deus ex machina of Baby Boomer clarity, he or she [smug grin barely withheld] would describe [sometimes accurately] the technology and its function and field whatever questions were asked before the rest of the group dispersed to pass their judgments about the dissenter during the car ride home. [I've long made it a habit at such events to just say nothing.])

I know the youth of America didn't use the good old Twitter to fight their government like the youth of Iran did, but I wondered if these same people felt such agony over whatever contraptions beguiled my generation: the internet before it "landed," nintendo, instant messenger. It's really just that these things are new, right? And older people don't know how to use them. I am sure someone will disagree with me here, but first let me finish.

People (especially younger ones) were always petty and vain and self-absorbed before there were blogs (grimace) and profiles and platforms and tumblrs to showcase their contrived personas, right? The falsehoods were just displayed in person then, in fantasy or real time or whatever.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I don't think it's all that bad or all that different today. There will always be trends and people captivated by shiny objects. I am certainly one of them; sometimes it fulfills me. And there will always be purists. The old school.

I'm not talking about my mother who hates technology and reads five books a week. I am talking about Gene Bernard. The other night, I was in a hurry uptown and I told him so. "Got it." he said, an affirmation without allegiance. Unlike most New York cabbies, he didn't have a headset on, he wasn't talking to someone in Pakistan or India or Eritrea or elsewhere. He was American. His mind was in New York. He was listening to jazz on the radio, adding his own horn to the soundtrack. He'd slam on the gas and then hit the brake. He'd edge in on other cars and pass them for no reason. We swung a left onto West 51st that nearly knocked two theatergoers back into Sondheim. While some Mingus played, I jerked back and forth while he swore and swerved. Then I went home and blogged about it.