Thumbing through pictures…
“Wasn’t that when we had the Dodge? Damn, that thing was a pain in the ass. Remember when the thermostat stuck shut on the way to the farm?”
“Look at that. There’s the old red Wheel Horse. That sumbitch just worked. Remember when we pulled out that old tree stump?”
“Right! I think that was about the same time we got that old piece of shit Maytag. Remember when that sucker let loose all over the basement on Christmas Eve?”
I’m a Gen-X’er. 1969, to be exact. The year of the moon landing, Woodstock, and the birth of ARPANET.
We, the Gen-X’ers mark the end of a nostalgic era in mechanized life. An era in which we fully anthropomorphize the machines from our past as family members. These machines are full-on characters in the stories we tell. Sometimes protagonists, and often just MacGuffins, but always playing a role.
Watch a Gen-X’er or boomer thumbing through pictures. Watch the eyes when a mechanized family member pops up, usually in the background. Then pay attention as briefly the story takes a quick sidebar. Complete with one’s overall view of the machine and a specific illustrating memory.
We live stories. We tell stories. We remember our past through stories and the characters in them. And our past informs who we are and the lens through which we see the world.
Those stories and their characters, including the mechanized ones, make us who we are.
