“Turn and face the strain”, goes the 70’s Bowie hit about self-reinvention. [1] You get a pre-coffee jolt this morning when your visiting grand daughter asks you about that that red-eyed, mullet-frocked, tie-dyed image that your kind old “friend” drunk-posted in Facebook one night. (It’s not that bad of a shot, really—minus of course that background object in the likeness of a bong.)
Now that you are Fox-News-following, Sunday-service-attending, Wall-Street-investing, Hair-Club-concealing grown-up, you sigh in relief—perhaps, in disbelief—at how much you’ve come round. You take that first gulp of coffee and stare down that snoopy nerd across the dining table: “It was a Halloween costume party, Sweetheart!”
It has been a long, arduous and oft-times circuitous forty years to get to where you are now. Taken to an emergency text message, your grand inquisitor swiftly drops the subject. Taken to the thought of a more truthful answer, you also wonder where the next decades will bring you? You shun immediate thoughts of hip replacement, Pampers and Poligrip. A careless, fun-loving, starry-eyed youth then comes to mind.
Writes John Thierny in his recent article in the NY Times, research suggests many of us tend to play down future changes in our personality and tastes. [2] Back to the seventies, you think. “Now, how do you erase images in Facebook?” you interrupt the tech guru from her annoying iPhone thumb tapping.
[1] facebook.com/davidbowie
[2] John Thierny, “Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be”, The New York Times, Jan. 3, 2013
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