You know the one, a well intentioned forward from a friend that kinda makes you grimace and wonder what they were thinking sending it to you in the first place.
I will admit, I am an opinionated, hyper analytical gal, a source of irritation for my husband, and truth be told, for myself as well, but on the whole, I believe in the philosophy of agree to disagree, (I’d better, seeing as my hubby is a southern conservative and I am a political moderate with left leanings. Yes. The debates are passionate and few…)
But this forward in particular really annoyed me.
I sat and stared at the screen, trying to put a finger on the “why”.
Then it came to me – dear girl had broken a bit of email etiquette by sending something I would not agree with in an effort to hoist her ideas upon me. While I do sincerely believe in people sharing their opinions, I think of the email box as a personal space that should be respected. It is something of a sanctuary, a communication hub, a place for friendly chats, exchanges of information, or heck, a joke or two.
This email forward was angry and political – two things that should never enter someone’s e-mail box unsolicited, and particularly should not come from someone who knows better…
The subject line read: “Those Born 1930-1979” and was about the supposed “good ole days”, where everything was so much better because people survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant, took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, didn’t get tested for diabetes, were put to sleep on their tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints, played outside in the street with rocks until the street lights came on, didn’t need car seats, X-Boxes -- oh! On and on it went, the only thing missing was the crotchety curmudgeon detailing the hell of walking uphill ten miles in the snow to get to school…
I mused, with some chagrin, on how my friend, knowing my political views, would forward me something I would so obviously disagree with.
The email made it appear as if the invention of car seats, vaccines, health consciousness, and various forms of entertainment were all fundamentally bad, nay evil, and because modem man had such things, this new generations was ignorant and doomed, no match for the intellectual and spiritual superiority of the wizened grays.
What the writers of the email and those who over romanticized this bygone era fail to realize is that all the above advancements that are being mocked, happened for a reason.
Car seats and seat belts have saved lives in an age where there are far more vehicles on the road. In 1930, a car was a luxury and the speed limits were far lower. Now a drunk sixteen year old can get behind the wheel. Yes – people ate what ever they wanted in the “good ole days” – but there was a reason people didn’t live as long as they do now.
Statistics on children born to mothers indicate that Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is a collection of defects that may include any combination of reduced growth (before or after birth), facial deformities, a small head (likely related to reduction of brain size), and abnormal behavioral development. Okay, sure, yeah – they didn’t test for diabetes and such back in the day, but what does that have to do with the skyrocketing obesity/diabetes epidemic that is a current reality and a leading cause of health problems in the US? Complaining that such issues didn’t exist fifty, eighty, or a hundred years ago does not negate their relevance in today’s’ world.
In regards to lead paint, in recent history, a child died after eating lead paint chips. In regards to putting babies on their tummies, since people have been placing babies on their backs, death rates from SIDS have gone down significantly. What do such people think? That the statistics are made up – that the powers that be created false skewered facts to keep them down in some grand medical and social conspiracy?
Seriously, do they really want to promote the idea that we don’t have to worry about obesity, diabetes, and protecting kids with car seats? Should we go around giving pregnant women bottles of gin and packs of smokes to thumb our noses at the modern establishment?
Knowledge and advancement are not inherently evil things.
Also, as a black female, I have always taken great exception to the term “good ole days”. There were no good ole days for African Americans. My father, who fought in Vietnam, came back to a nation that told him to sit in the back of the bus. I also recall being told to enter the rear of a movie theatre well after Jim Crow had been abolished.
I was five years old at the time.
I’d say it is an improvement, not a setback, that I can enter the front of any place I want to, with my white husband and mixed daughter beside me. Blacks, women and minorities have made advancements in this new world, and in this respect, things have gotten better, not worse.
So, I sit there a moment after getting my dander up, thoughts swirling, wondering if I should point my friend’s email faux pas out to her. I contemplated it a minute and decided to do so.
I wrote her back and politely told her that while I understood the point of view of the writer of the forward, I had a lot of issues with the subject matter, and that I wished people could stop holding on to the past and embrace the future, accepting the fact that things change, and there is an amazing amount of good in the world today, despite the bad.
I think I also, ever so politely, asked her not to send me anything of that nature again.
She hasn’t written back and don’t suspect she will. I have no fear that our friendship is in jeopardy over the incident, but if it is, I can only ascertain that our relationship could not withstand scrutiny or honesty and was a fragile thing to start with.
Maybe, hopefully, she is contemplating what I said, and will perhaps look at the positive things we have today as opposed to what we no longer have, for Billy Joel said it best when he wrote, “ the Good Ole days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems”.
I also hope that she, along with others, will become a tad more considerate of the tentative nuances of email communication and think a little before sending their thoughts off into the void of cyberspace …
