by Rose Madeline Mula
My friend Abigail (nowhere near her real name) was born in the wrong era and place. She would have been much happier living in Victorian England (preferably with her idols, the Bronte sisters), an age uncontaminated by technological abominations like the internal combustion engine, the Internet (which she is convinced is inherently evil), e-mail, telephone answering machines, and even telephones, for that matter.
And if she must have a phone, why does she have to dial the numbers herself (yes, she still has a rotary dial phone). She misses that friendly voice that used to ask, “Number please.”
As for cell phones, you possibly can guess what she thinks about them. I showed her mine one day, and she said, “Why on earth do you want something like that! Throw it away!”
Though she does appreciate elevators in stores, now that she’s older and her joints creak when climbing stairs, she rues the day she had to start pushing the floor buttons herself. She misses that nice white-gloved operator in store elevators who announced the departments at each stop.
Several years ago, Abigail moved into a house with a dishwasher. She has never turned it on. She uses it to store her extra china. Ditto the microwave oven over the stove. She does store food in the refrigerator, but she had been perfectly happy with her old ice box which didn’t use any electricity at all; but unfortunately, the iceman stopped coming around. She’s very suspect about not just her fridge, but anything that requires a plug in order to function. She would never buy a blender or an electric beater. A wooden spoon was good enough for her grandmother, and it’s good enough for her.
The last I heard, Abigail still didn’t have a washing machine. She rinses out her “personals” in the bathroom sink and scrubs her sheets and towels in the bathtub. Clothes dryer? Don’t be ridiculous. God made trees to string clotheslines from, didn’t He?
Abigail simply cannot adjust to the modern age.
She thinks ATM machines are an invention of the devil. She certainly would never trust her good money to one (even if she could figure out how to make it work). And she’s definitely suspicious of electronic bank deposits. She still insists that Uncle Sam mail her Social Security check to her home.
She misses all the beautiful baby carriages with their lovely hand-knit blankets that proud mothers used to push, instead of those collapsible monstrosities they cart their children around in today.
She is beyond shocked that young women actually wash their hair—and even go swimming!—when they have their period. She’s even more dismayed that periods are actually discussed in public. And in mixed company yet, as well as in print ads and TV commercials! (Yes, she did succumb and buy a television set, but she watches only cultural PBS programs, and refuses to learn how to use the remote control.)
Abigail also cannot understand pregnant women appearing in public, unembarrassed by their big bellies. Don’t they realize people will know how they got that way? In her day, they were much more discreet.
She often wonders whatever happened to aprons and house dresses. In fact, she questions whatever happened to dresses, period. She is convinced that American culture degenerated when women began wearing pants. That was when wives started to think that maybe their husbands shouldn’t be the boss and tell them what to do. Tsk! Tsk! Everyone knows that men are smarter and should rule the household. Women should not be worrying their pretty heads about things they don’t understand. The whole “women’s liberation” nonsense is unnatural and sinful, she maintains.
She drives twenty miles out of her way to a service station where the nice young man at the cash register will come out to pump the gas for her. She’d never dream of doing it herself (again, even if she knew how). She’s a lady, and that’s man’s work.
And why, in heaven’s name, do her contemporaries, and even much younger females, want to be called “women” instead of “girls”? What’s that all about?
She decries the demise of women’s hats and white gloves. A Catholic, she would never dream of entering a church hatless, regardless of the new rules. And she still won’t eat meat on Fridays, no matter what that progressive Pope said decades ago. She never did quite trust him.
Abigail really hates super markets. The bigger they are, the more she detests them. She misses the small neighborhood independent grocer who waited on you (no reaching to shelves and into bins to select your own food) and wrote and added up the prices on a paper bag. What’s more, he knew how much change to give you from a twenty dollar bill without having a new-fangled machine tell him. Furthermore, you always got change from a twenty when you bought a week’s worth of groceries.
As for those groceries, I bet she’s secretly glad that Mr. Birdseye invented frozen foods, though she’d never admit to using them.
And why is everyone always carrying a bottle of water wherever they go, she wonders. Do they think they’re going to suddenly be abducted by aliens and dropped in the middle of the Sahara?
She liked it better before anyone had ever heard of cholesterol. How are you supposed to make a flaky pie crust without lard, she asks. And how come real sour cream, real butter, real bacon—in fact, anything really tasty—are now no-no’s?
And whatever happened to music, Abigail wants to know. She can’t believe the hideous sounds produced by today’s rock bands that have names like “Post-Surgical Adhesions.” As far as she’s concerned there hasn’t been any music worth listening to since Lawrence Welk went to that big bandstand in the sky. The last singing group she enjoyed were those lovely Maguire Sisters. And she absolutely refuses to believe that one of them could ever have been involved with a Mafioso.
As for movies, Abigail hasn’t been to one since the Hays Office was abolished, but she has heard that without censorship the cinema has sunk to unbelievable depravity. Couples are actually shown in double beds! Worse, on-screen nudity is allowed! (She spells it “nudirty.”) She also has heard that the language is atrocious. If she were ever unfortunate enough to enter a movie theater these days, she knows she would have to be physically restrained from rushing down the aisle to wash out the actors’ mouths with soap. But even if the movies were still decent, she wouldn’t go. She understands that the price is fifty times what it used to be—even with a senior discount—and there’s no second feature, no newsreel, and no free dishes.
And it’s not just the movies. Everything is ridiculously expensive these days. She can’t get over the fact that a couple of root canals and a filling cost more than she and her husband paid for their first house.
But, then, nothing is the same as it used to be. Abigail went to a high school reunion recently and was horrified to see that the gorgeous football hero hunk she had had a huge crush on in her senior year had deteriorated to a wizened, wrinkled mess. How could he have let himself go so in such a short time?
And speaking of school, she is absolutely horrified that colleges now have co-ed dorms and uni-sex bathrooms. (I have to admit that so am I, actually.)
I also agree with Abigail on a few other issues:
Why aren’t they making mirrors like they did fifty years ago? These new ones certainly don’t reflect images accurately. All of mine apparently are covered with hairline cracks that make my face look like a topographical map. And why do we have to pay $125 for a jar of face cream we used to get at Woolworths for twenty-five cents? And whatever happened to Woolworths, by the way?
OMG! I’m beginning to sound like Abigail! Next thing I know, I’ll be tossing my computer out the window and trading in my car for a horse and buggy.
My friend Abigail (nowhere near her real name) was born in the wrong era and place. She would have been much happier living in Victorian England (preferably with her idols, the Bronte sisters), an age uncontaminated by technological abominations like the internal combustion engine, the Internet (which she is convinced is inherently evil), e-mail, telephone answering machines, and even telephones, for that matter.
And if she must have a phone, why does she have to dial the numbers herself (yes, she still has a rotary dial phone). She misses that friendly voice that used to ask, “Number please.”
As for cell phones, you possibly can guess what she thinks about them. I showed her mine one day, and she said, “Why on earth do you want something like that! Throw it away!”
Though she does appreciate elevators in stores, now that she’s older and her joints creak when climbing stairs, she rues the day she had to start pushing the floor buttons herself. She misses that nice white-gloved operator in store elevators who announced the departments at each stop.
Several years ago, Abigail moved into a house with a dishwasher. She has never turned it on. She uses it to store her extra china. Ditto the microwave oven over the stove. She does store food in the refrigerator, but she had been perfectly happy with her old ice box which didn’t use any electricity at all; but unfortunately, the iceman stopped coming around.
She’s very suspect about not just her fridge, but anything that requires a plug in order to function. She would never buy a blender or an electric beater. A wooden spoon was good enough for her grandmother, and it’s good enough for her.
The last I heard, Abigail still didn’t have a washing machine. She rinses out her “personals” in the bathroom sink and scrubs her sheets and towels in the bathtub. Clothes dryer? Don’t be ridiculous. God made trees to string clotheslines from, didn’t He?
Abigail simply cannot adjust to the modern age.
She thinks ATM machines are an invention of the devil. She certainly would never trust her good money to one (even if she could figure out how to make it work). And she’s definitely suspicious of electronic bank deposits. She still insists that Uncle Sam mail her Social Security check to her home.
She misses all the beautiful baby carriages with their lovely hand-knit blankets that proud mothers used to push, instead of those collapsible monstrosities they cart their children around in today.
She is beyond shocked that young women actually wash their hair — and even go swimming! — when they have their period. She’s even more dismayed that periods are actually discussed in public. And in mixed company yet, as well as in print ads and TV commercials! (Yes, she did succumb and buy a television set, but she watches only cultural PBS programs, and refuses to learn how to use the remote control.)