When I was in the service, there were guys on my ship who had served in World War II. One of the destroyers in our squadron had little trophies stenciled on her bridge wings representing Japanese planes she had shot down. WWII had ended 23 years earlier, but for me that was ancient history. I look back at that time now and it is hard to process the idea that the Vietnam war is almost twice as far away in time from me now as the Big One was from me then. Come to think of it, I was about as far from the Vietnam era then as I'm from the Gulf War now...ancient history.

I remember my parents talking to me about the music of their youth; the Big Band era. The names ring a bell, but except for maybe Glenn Miller, I doubt I could recognize any of their distinctive styles if I heard them on the radio now. But I'm further away in time now from The Beatles, Hendrix, the Airplane, the Doors, and so on than I was from Big Bands when I was listening to Woodstock. This is particularly odd because a lot of kids in their twenties now have some knowledge of the British Invasion, the San Francisco Sound, and other Ancient Rock Formations of the Paleolithic Era. They seem so culturally desolate, so short-changed by history.

I remember how shocked I was when one of the girls I worked with last year told me she had never heard of the Falklands War, and that she had studied the Cold War in school. Still, I can't help but have the feeling that the world changed much more for my parent's generation than it has for mine. Maybe its just because there are proportionately so many Boomers that they dominate the demography, so they have an exaggerated conception of their effect on history, and vice-versa. Or maybe its just because subjective time passes at different
speeds for different ages. I was in my 20s in the 1970s, a lot went down back then, or maybe I was just more active than before or since. I can't seem to shake the idea that the world went through a shattering adolescence right along with me, but my reason tells me the thought cannot really be taken seriously on an objective level. After all, why should I be any different?

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that things are always changing, but they somehow remain exactly the same; on the surface a totally absurd statement, but it suddenly has a profound and mystical meaning for me.