People say things are crazier today than in the past.  Well I have a little bit of input that might prove those people right.  My daughter and I went to see the movie Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.  The film is set in 1969 and some of the storyline focuses on the Manson Family with several of their young female cultists hitchhiking around Los Angeles.  When my daughter saw this she said to me “did people really do that?”  Hitchhike?  Yes, yes they did including your father.  It occurred to me when she said that that people standing on the side of the road with their thumb extended hoping a stranger would give them a ride seems rather ludicrous today but when I was younger a lot of people did it and most of the time the results were not tragic.  I can’t remember the last time I saw someone hitching a ride.  So what’s the deal, were people less cray cray back then and you wouldn’t think twice about jumping in a perfect stranger’s car nor would you think twice as a driver about picking someone up on the side of the highway?  What changed and when did the change come about?  I’ve talked about naked swimming at public pools that went on for years and no one seemed to question it.  Oh I questioned it but was told my swim trunks would have brought sand in from the beach and clogged the filters to which I replied “I never went to the beach.”  And through of all that I never heard of anything weird going on around it.  Can you imagine the outcry today if you demanded kids swim naked at a public pool?  Also during the summers in my youth I would leave the house early in the morning and return at sunset, never checked in and pretty much was never asked where I’d been all day and yet nothing bad ever befell me or anyone I knew who was on the same schedule. Now kids barely leave their backyard or are under constant supervision. So what the hell has happened over the years?  Is it because there are more people on the planet and the chance of more nutballs being introduced to the gene pool has made us super cautious and super suspicious?  I have to admit years ago I never thought about what I would do if someone opened fire in the supermarket I was in because THAT PRETTY MUCH NEVER HAPPENED!  Now I do.  But having used the Manson Family hitchhiking I realize people were picking up complete wackos in 1969 so how much better were “the good ol’ days?”  Here’s the moment when things started to go off the rails, when the game of “horseshoes” was replaced with “cornhole.”

Gunga, galunga,
Garry