A Vintage State of Mind

Sometimes, like right now as I am playing Fats Domino and Chubby Checker, I think that perhaps I was born in the wrong era.

It's no accident that our home was built in 1927. My kitchen is green, my floor is black and white tiles, and my blender is probably from when my father's parents were married, which would be more than 60 years ago now (my husband has his own, modern blender. It lives in a drawer... which he won't know until he reads this!). I wear gloves, not the kind that keep your hands warm, but the kind that look pretty. If my husband wouldn't be horrendously embarrassed, I'd wear vintage hats when I dress up, and I chose my wedding gown with the likes of Jackie O and Audrey Hepburn in mind. My new swimsuits for whenever we manage to find the time to go on a honeymoon would look fabulous on pin-ups. I aspire shamelessly to look like my Ashley family grandmother and her sisters.

I would be totally fine with wearing dresses every day (which, incidentally, I nearly do already and DID as a child... I got my first pair of jeans in middle school, and only because I was so horribly made fun of for not wearing pants) and peep-toe pumps are officially my favorite shoes. I love teaching and will more than likely continue to work as an educator when we have children, but let me make it totally clear that I have not a single problem with women staying at home, raising the children and running the household. It's hard, valuable work. I don't believe we have gender roles for some hate or judgment of inferiority, but because it works well--and I am quite happy with doing all of the laundry and my husband mowing the grass, yet I am also fine with mowing that grass myself while he's gone.

So perhaps I wasn't meant to live in the 40s or 50s, but I sure do like a lot of things from that time. I don't think things are made like they used to be, I am becoming less and less okay with the mass quantity of plastics and technology overrunning people's lives (um, the iPhone? hate it. Blackberry? hate it. Why? Have you tried to hold a conversation with anyone who owns one of those dadgum things?). If it weren't for college football and basketball, I'd be willing to ditch the TV and I fully intend to severely limit my children's time on the computer, and don't even think they will be on it before about age 5. Whatever happened to kids playing tag and catching fireflies? I wish that we still held things like family dinners together and education to the level of importance people did way, way back. I would like if people paid as much attention to their neighbors as they do to their facebook friends, and as nice as virtual communities may be I think many of us forget we live in REAL ones too.

Clearly, I am glad to see segregation, racism, and sexism improve, but I think we permit far more than we realize of all of the above still. If you don't agree with me, fine, but you are welcome to come see the demographics of the schools here and in places like Charlotte and Wake County, North Carolina or Chicago if you think segregation is past; you don't need to look past the Cambridge, MA police and a black Harvard professor or find any interracial couple if you want to know if blatant racism still exists; and women, still, don't make even close to what men in the same positions do. We had terrorism then, in the form of the KKK, and we have terrorism now in the form of Jihadists--both, incidentally, motivated by racial and (purported) principles of faith. I'm glad I can google anything I want to know about, Skype with friends around the globe, and word process at the speed of lightning, but I am just not convinced that things today are all that much better and I don't think I am backwards for admiring the past.

Okay, "Deuce Coupe" is playing and I've got more new textbook series to look over!