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Highlands Today

A Stranger Within Us

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Norm Cukras

Published: August 8, 2008

This column was published in Highlands Today on Saturday, Aug. 2 2008

I enjoy "News of the Weird," a feature that appears in this paper on Sundays. It reinforces what I learned in my college psychology classes: no matter how strange I may appear there are a lot of people out there who are stranger than I am. In fact we may all have a strange stranger living within us. How else can we explain those things we do?

There was a time when we accepted that at least one of our peers was better than we were, at least in some areas. But apparently that is not accepted any more. In a recent column "News of the Weird" reported that in Japan parents are pushing for their children's "rights." And at one school parents bullied officials into casting 25 students in the title role of the school's production of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Which begs the question of why the parents didn't take offense to their darlings being referred to as dwarfs? In fact the whole title seems politically incorrect.

How about renaming it: "Abused Young Woman Given Refuge by Seven Diamond Miners"?

Of course you have heard the term "Helicopter Parents." It refers to those parents who protectively hover over their offspring. I've even heard tell of parents going on job interviews with, or even in place of, their adult children. I wonder if they got the idea from athletes and performers.

Pre-What

My grandparents had a small truck farm just south of Cleveland, Ohio. There were a couple of gullies that ran through the property. My brother and I were able to play Tarzan by swinging out over the chasms on vines hanging from trees. One of the gullies also served as a trash dump for stuff like worn out farm equipment. I've often wondered what history buffs would think if they happened to stumble on the site and began to excavate it. How would they interpret what they would find? Even though it's only been about 60 years or so since it was used as the family trash heap.

"Wow," one of the diggers might exclaim, "this stuff dates back to the pre-computer days!"

Which begs the question, "What 'pre-age' are we really in?"

A lot of antiques today are classified as pre-war, which means sometime before World War II or at least 67 years old. Archeologists digging in and around here might say that and artifact is pre-Columbian meaning before Columbus managed to sully the pristine shores of the new world. These would be over 500 years old. But what about the landfill we're leaving? It's got to be pre-something?

Things like typewriters, telephones and CRTs. Perhaps we will classify them as pre those things that obsoleted them: like computers, blueteeth or plasma. Or maybe even something like pre $3 a gallon gas.

Of course with technology moving as fast as it is children of today look upon their parents as primitives as in "How could you have survived if you weren't in constant communications with the world?" or "Were dinosaurs really as big as the movies show them to be?"

Another Dinosaur

If you don't think the VHS format for movie watching is dead, take a look at the prices they're bringing on eBay. You'll be lucky to get a dollar or two for the more popular ones.

It's McCain

By the way, his name is Senator John McCain. His wife is Cindy. I just thought you might want to be reminded of the other presidential hopeful. Apparently the mainstream media has forgotten that it is going to be at least a two-person race as in past elections.

Overheard

Overheard at the checkout counter: It's not that we mind immigrants not wanting to speak our language it's the fact that they and the enablers want us to speak theirs.

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