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Highlands Today

Pint-sized cars don't work for older folks

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By Norm Cukras | Highlands Today

Published: June 27, 2009

I was chatting with a concerned father of a teenage daughter who wanted to start dating. When he said he would prefer she wait until she was 16, she asked if she could at least text this one particular boy. The father agreed. After all, he rationalized there is no "touch" in texting.

As Louis L'Amour wrote in one of his 104 books, "Dreams are in the mind; reality in the hands."

It's How You View It
After comparing ailments with me, my neighbor commented, "I thought we were supposed to be in our golden years. To me it seems more like the lead years or zinc years."

And that's how automakers and Hollywood producers view us - like fossils. And what the car designers fail to recognize is that we fossils cannot fold ourselves like accordions to get into the new energy efficient pint-size cars. We need room. We have been given the SUV. But we can't lift our legs high enough to mount them. And the luxury cars continue to shrink. I dread to think what we are going to end up with from Government Motors.

And action movies today don't give us fossilized fans a chance to focus on a scene before it changes. I wonder if I'm the only person on the planet that thinks the Star Trek prequel rates just one star. Cameras move too quickly and I like to see a whole person. For some reason the director felt we really had no need to see peoples' heads or distant shots.

I wish someday someone would take the time to explain to me the purpose of today's photography with its strange angles and head cropping. But they must be willing to listen to my reasons for not caring for the new style rather than simply telling me something like, "You don't get it."

Another car thought
It's a fact that as we grow older our bodies shrink. A friend of mine who is really old has a theory about this. He feels that if we live long enough we'll just kinda squeeze down to nothingness. Well, I will agree that he's slowly disappearing.

Hey, that may be why car manufacturers aren't making big cars for old people anymore; they feel we are shrinking to a size that will fit into their future designs.

Childhood myths
There were two occasions that tended to shatter my childhood perception of life. One involved my grandmother; the other a schoolteacher.

I spent some parts of my summer vacations on my grandparents' farm and was awaken most mornings to the sound of my grandmother grinding coffee beans in a wall mounted hand grinder. On a visit to her new no-longer-a-farmhouse home after I married she made coffee for me. It was Sanka instant coffee. This woman just wasn't the same grandmother of my youth. My childhood image of her was shattered.

I once had an elementary school teacher who would entertain us with stories about her summer vacations. To us she was an explorer. She was the first person I ever met who had actually flown in an airplane. Teachers to us were special people who lived magical lives when away from the classroom. They were either traveling or studying. Then one day when I was in a higher grade I stumbled upon a teacher working in a downtown department store – selling shoes. What a rude awakening. Teachers weren't supposed to work outside of the classroom: especially not selling shoes.

Still, whether you teachers on summer break travel, study or even do other type work, enjoy your time away from the travails of the classroom.

Overheard
Overheard at the checkout counter: I would find it very uncomfortable trying to read the online news on a laptop while in the bathroom.

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