The Cyber Monday Revolution

             Yesterday was “Cyber Monday”. Be still, my credit card.

I have nothing against shopping online. I think there are still some people who feel a little sketchy about the security of it or paranoid about the privacy of it, but I’ve always figured that I’m just as likely to be robbed in person. The difference is if I’m robbed in cyberspace, I’m less likely to be assaulted on top of it.

                The Internet’s emergence from its “primitive” origins seems to have moved awfully fast, but maybe it just seems that way because I was actually here for the birth of the Information Highway. I remember the Internet when it was just a drooling baby; now, it’s a sassy teenager getting ready to head off to five, I mean four, years of college.

                I read one time that computer technology’s growth, by its nature, is exponential, based perhaps (if I am remembering correctly) on miniaturization and the way microchips work. If that’s true, the world, even 10 years from now, might look much different than it does now. It’s always hard to imagine the nature of what the next revolution might be, and then it comes along and we wonder how we ever got along without it. Like snuggies.

                The year I first discovered the Internet was either 1996 or ’97, in college, when a few buddies and myself were gathered around a computer in one of our public labs. The lab was basically for students who couldn’t afford their own computer or word processor (Remember word processors? Mine was circa 1880).

My friend Randy was showing us this new thing called email. He would click on a button, and outlines of images would begin to formulate, and then start to fill in very slowly, like an avant-garde motion graphic short, and the modem (though I had no idea what a modem was then) made a strange humming sound when you turned it on like an alien beehive stirring to life. My first impression was that it would probably be something only “computer guys” would use. I was still convinced that computers were solely for homework, solitaire and minesweeper and not necessarily in that order.

Indifference is always my first reaction to new-fangled-what-have-yous. I was one of the last Americans to own a cell phone (If you still don’t own a cell phone; you win). I never understood the appeal of people being able to reach me every minute of the day. To be honest, I still don’t, but now any time I leave the house without my cell phone, the wife and I react as if one of the children is missing. “How are we going to live for an hour without our cell phone?” My wife asks.

                “If we just stick together, we’ll make it through,” I say with false bravado.

                I don’t blame us (maybe pity us a bit). Our perspectives change with each new revolution. Today, when I take my daughters out for a drive, I strap them into their car seats like I’m preparing them for a space launch. When I was a child, if I found a seat belt anywhere near me, it was usually either broken or buried so far down the cushion that extraction was only possible with the aid of large machinery. I imagine in 30 years, children will be riding around cars in hockey goalie helmets and body armor, inside air-compression capsules. My daughters will grow up and become appalled that they rode in cars in flimsy plastic chairs and not in air-compression capsules.

                I wonder if there will always be a next revolution or if there is a diminishing end to all of the progress. The next revolution could be something simple, like a new variation on an old thing, the same way something like digitalization improved photography, or it may be something totally crazy like anti-aging medicines and actual immortality. (See this article if you want to delve into the subject a bit)

                The odd thing is how each revolution changes how we are informed but also how we view the world and how much we value something. It reminds me how contextual life is and how much of my opinion is informed by the exact timeframe I am living in. The way my parents transported me in vehicles is considered criminal today. That was less than 30 years ago. The world, it be a’ changing and fast-like.

                It is interesting what the revolutions reveal to us and about us, and how easily they can transform my life, my opinions and even my belief system, without even my complete awareness. The revolutions, the sheer speed of them, sometimes create a sense of panic within me, like we’re on a train, downhill, with no brakes. How could one even keep track of it all—this peculiar oversaturation of media? The world is a’ changing—faster than ever but it may be more accurate to say that it’s accumulating. The new thing becomes the old thing so fast that I can’t keep track of which is which. The train just speeds along, gathering more and more gadgets and gizmos along the way. Jumping on isn’t always easy, but once you do, jumping off is even harder.

A Tribute to My Grandmother

This wasn’t how I initially planned to start my blog, but when my grandmother, Madeline Fay Gallagher, passed away last Sunday morning, I thought there was no better way to kick off this little venture than by paying tribute to a very special woman. I will miss you, grandma.

I always had trouble sleeping at my grandparents’ house. There were two reasons. One, I was always a combination of too excited and wired from the array of candy that always adorned grandma’s kitchen counter, arranged in neat, clean jars beneath the cabinets. My grandparents’ home was a wonderland of sorts. You could swim, play ping pong or billiards or tennis or basketball or even a grand piano (poorly, in my case). There were also a collection of board games, toys and books which lay undisturbed the odd days grandchildren weren’t invading their home. With all of that treasure waiting for you, sleep felt like a waste of perfectly good frolicking time.

The second reason I would have trouble sleeping was my grandparents’ home turned surprisingly spooky in the evenings. The eeriness increased the farther back in the house you traveled, culminating in the ominous back bedrooms, nearest the pool. The combination of a back porch light against a large pomegranate tree created shadows through the window, which gesticulated threateningly against the backlit walls. The house’s lengthy hallway leading to the back bedrooms would also yawn and creak throughout the night, as if some apparition was pacing back and forth through the corridor. I would lie in bed frightened for a time until I imagined the creaking house was just grandpa keeping watch outside, and eventually I would drift to sleep.

In the mornings, I was always awake much too early, but never before grandma and grandpa. They were already digging into the morning paper, sitting in the dining room in front of a large window that overlooked their front yard. “How did you sleep?” my grandma would ask.

“Great!” I said, already planning my day’s festivities. But it always started with breakfast, just the three of us while I looked over the Sports page, trying to show a mature reserve before wreaking havoc on their unsuspecting wonderland. “Are you done with the comics?” I’d ask halfway through my second bowl of Trix.

My grandfather was a doctor, but my grandparents made their money in the early days in real estate, buying a house after the Second World War, letting the property appreciate before selling it, then rinsing and repeating the process a few times until finally building the house they would raise their six children in, before it finally became the playground of 11 unruly grandchildren.

My grandmother was always generous with her time and her service. Feeding others wasn’t just a chore for her, it was a theology and if there was one thing she wouldn’t tolerate, it was a foolish dishwasher arrangement. But her grace always abounded. She would just rearrange the plates and pans the way she liked later. 

As I got older, I would bring friends over to the house, to swim and play basketball or shoot pool. I would always call first. “You don’t have to call,” my grandma would always say. “Just come over.”

“Well, I was just making sure no one else was using the pool.”

“Just come over any time you want. Even if we aren’t here.” That last bit was always funny. It seemed like they were always there for us.

My friends loved the house too, in part, because my grandparents treated any friend of mine like a grandchild of theirs. “You can play pool, but no gambling,” Was my grandpa’s go-to joke. The vast array of sodas in the garage—usually the same selection you could find in your local grocery store—were always for us. I only realized later that it was all for us—that house much too big for just them. My grandpa spent hours tending that yard (both my brothers were married in it), my grandma doing the same inside, all the work the upkeep must have been. The sacrifice that house represented never occurred to me then.

My grandmother loved history. She liked to talk about her college days in Oregon, “Not many women went to college back then,” she would remind us, not as a boast so much as an indication of the times and how they’ve changed. She talked about the city in the days when there was just one stoplight, when farmland engulfed the area. The orchards and cornfields and cherry blossoms have been pushed back to the edge of the city now.

The story of how they met is famous in our family and I’ve probably repeated it near as many times as my grandpa now. “They’ve heard this story, Hugh” grandma would say, but he’d just plow through, understanding a good story is worth telling over and over. He was from Nebraska, but during the war, he caught a ride in the backseat of a jeep that rolled over a land mine. He injured his foot and used it as an opportunity to relocate.

“Where would you like to go?” They asked him.

“How about California,” my grandpa said.

In the rehabilitation hospital in California, a pretty nurse named Fay was taking care of him. My grandpa’s roommate confided in him, “I think I’m going to ask her out.”

“Are you kidding?” my grandpa replied. “She’s way too young.”

“I only said that, because I wanted to ask her out,” my grandpa always added when telling the story, in case we missed the point. They were married just a short time later.

My grandparents had three priorities in particular order: God, family and tennis. My grandfather had a tennis court built in the middle of his cul-de-sac, which was remarkable enough, but the two of them also watched the sport vociferously, recording even the most fringe tournaments to watch them later, on video cassette. Whenever I would ask grandma who she was rooting for, she would always say, “I just want to see a good match.”

When my grandpa died, and the house was placed on the market, I thought for certain I would miss it. But I didn’t really. After grandma moved out, it just became a mass of wood and cement and panels. I haven’t been back to see it since she moved out. I’m not sure I ever will.

My grandmother possessed strong faith in God, devotion to her husband and tender love for her grandchildren, but her quiet strength, pleasant nature and grace will be the memories that linger. There were times, in the wonderland of their home, when I wished, and maybe actually believed, that none of it would ever come to an end. That we would continue on and on forever in that way, celebrating major holidays in that home, cooling off in their pool every summer, grandpa pruning trees in his sun hat, grandma chatting with one of her daughters in the patio room. Somewhere deep down, I believed those haunted back rooms would always cast their shadows as grandpa roamed the hallways, keeping guard, allowing the grandchildren to sleep peacefully. There would always be more early morning breakfasts to share.

The most startling realization is always that it will never be the same. That it never could be. The undefinable essence of my grandparents’ lives and my experiences with them can never be replicated. And it becomes clear what made your loved ones the way they are was something singular—unchangeable and unrepeatable. And then you realize just how special their lives really were.