Prospective

 Some time this summer (2024), I will have around 13,000 days or 1,877 weeks, or 36 years that I've lived beyond the US border (either in Panama, Saudi, or Germany).

Yeah, I have this odd prospective on things....because I can remember the last year or two of the farm period (1976/1977).

The number of times that people sat around and talked over President Ford or President Carter....in some chatty situation?  Well....it just didn't happen...not in church....not at the general store....not on the front porch.

Friendships, relationships....broke up over politics?  Never happened.

You didn't sit around and label one out of ten people you heard speaking in 1976/1977 a hypocrite.  

You didn't stand there in 1976/1977 assessing someone's marginal IQ....like I continually do today.

You didn't see people so far into debt in 1976/1977....that even if they were making $100,000 a year....they were stone-cold 'broke'.

You didn't really notice that many people who were toxic in their personality in 1976/1977.....so bad like it today, that you'd almost think they got some demon-situation requiring a Catholic priest.

You tended to readily identify people in 1976/1977 easily as having lunacy or being senile.  Today?  You get told that only qualified and certified people can label people with dementia.

People in 1976/1977....still  remember members of the family or neighbors from the early 1960s.....who got sent 'off' (meaning they went to the state facility for insane folks).  Today, you just know that cousin Randy went off to LA and lives off the street, and your aunt with the schizophrenia problem....is in some Oregon jail for 12 years, for trying to exercise some demon out of a lady friend.

People in 1976/1977 barely grasped the official rules of pronouns, and with their southern dialect....you had to sometimes ask for a second speaking of the sentence to get the 'word'.  Today?  You have Johnny-turned-Belinda....giving you 12 extra rules on pronoun use, and the grocery clerk gal.....Belinda-turned-Johnny giving another whole set of pronoun rules.  Neither seem destined for anything in life except trouble.

People in 1976/1977 read through a 16-page newspaper in thirty minute, watching 30 minutes of Mister Cronkite, and 30 minutes of local news....highlighted by H.D. Bagley telling you that storms be acoming shortly on Friday.  Today, from 6 AM to 10 PM.....you could be getting a minimum of 12 hours of news....of which 90-percent doesn't really affect you, your dog, or the crazy blonde gal next door who mows the lawn weekly in cowboy boots and a bikini.

Finally, if you were stopped on the street in 1976/1977....being asked to define a man or a woman...100-percent of people could define it in 30 seconds.  Today?  I'm not sure that a quarter of the nation can do it.  

There's some loss of reality going on, but most can't recognize it.