A glimpse of us

What do you call your grandmother’s sister? Is she your “grand-aunt” or your “great-aunt”?

Apparently genealogists feel that “grand-aunt” is correct because a grandparent’s sibling should be a grand as well. Ancestry.com has thus decreed that “grand” relatives are two generations away and “great” relatives are three generations away.

For some reason, “great-aunt” rolls off my tongue a little easier. But I’m willing to follow the rules.

I hadn’t thought about this until recently, when I visited Kentucky to catch up with my in-laws and to meet our niece Alicia’s brand-new baby boy, Cooper. (He is apparently my grand-nephew, and I love being a grand-aunt.)

In any case, Cooper is a dream. He’s 6 months old and just about everything in life makes him break out in giggles. He hardly cries and in fact rarely appears even mildly perturbed. And although he’s related to me by marriage and not by blood, I’ll take credit for his good nature anyway.

***

What startled me about this visit, though, was a conversation I had with our niece Tara and her good friend Kelly. To set the stage, both of them are 40 years old.

We were sitting around late one night when the two of them expressed interest in seeing YouTube videos of my former band, Three Hour Tour, and then of my 40^th birthday party in 1995. Over my protestations about the party film – “You’re going to be bored out of your mind by this; it’s 3 hours long!” I argued – they insisted. And I was stunned by the comments they made afterwards.

The party was an event held in the huge downstairs garage of my rental house in San Francisco. About 50 people attended. It was a roast, with an emcee and multiple speakers. A few people came from other states, including my army friend Mary Lynne, who was stationed in Colorado Springs but surprised me after calling me earlier from a local phone booth, pretending she couldn’t make it. My parents and siblings were there, as were work colleagues, bandmates, sports teammates, and an array of friends.

At the party, someone went around with a camcorder interviewing the attendees, who all seemed eager to lampoon me on camera. One of the guests – my friend Diane – had already submitted a heartfelt half-hour video tribute to our hilarious misadventures that was as funny as anything a professional comedian could put together. Lauren, a friend from the East Coast, had re-written Springsteen’s “Working on the Highway” and re-titled it “Hey, Paula Bocciardi.”

My favorite verse:

“She’s all grown up; in fact she’s middle-aged
When people call her ‘ma’am,’ it sure does put her in a rage
She irons out her jeans to make them look just right
Of course it doesn’t matter, she wears ’em so tiiiiiiiight”

People submitted pictures and put together an enormous photo album with witty captions. Julie and her brother set a videotaped photo montage to music. My friend Kay, the emcee, had asked the invitees to answer innumerable poll questions about me, and everyone was cooperative.

One foursome sequestered themselves briefly in my bedroom and mooned a camera – something I didn’t know about until weeks later when I got the photos. Quite the surprise.

My mother made homemade lasagne. Corks popped. And the roast went on for hours.

***

After Tara and Kelly looked at the film, which seemed to move them in some way, Tara made a statement that shocked me.

“That could never happen now,” she declared.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“First of all,” she said, “no one today has 50 friends.”

Is that really the case? Don’t all young people have 500 Facebook friends?

“But what I really mean,” she continued, “is that you wouldn’t see that kind of commitment. Of all the people invited, many would just rather stay home and watch everyone’s Instagram posts later. No one would want to sit through a full roast or take the time to send photos and write speeches. And your video would have been full of just people on their phones. Honestly, this kind of thing just could never happen today.”

Kelly agreed. “It seems the world has traded genuine human connection for social media,” she said. “Everybody [at the party] was so cool. They had their own style, they had their own personality, they weren’t afraid to talk to other people in the room or talk on camera. They knew how to interact in a social setting. It’s a stark contrast from today.” 

I was speechless.

Remember, these observations didn’t come from a dinosaur like me, someone perhaps tied too strongly to the distant past. They were the perspectives of two smart, popular, successful, beautiful, totally cool 40-year-old women.

Looking back over the footage now, I see that, of course, no one was looking at a phone. (The Blackberry didn’t even appear until 1999, and the smartphone not until 2007.) Throughout the entire night’s program, everyone paid close attention. And between speeches, the socializing was lively and the laughter constant. I think that, in a way, we were celebrating each other and all of our quirks, with affection and not a smidgen of critique.

“While watching the video, I kept thinking how different a party like that would look today,” Tara told me afterward. “Greetings at the door would be filled with awkward side-hugs from less-than-acquaintances who don’t really like each other. Conversations between small groups would be interrupted by someone pulling their phone out to share some HI-larious reel or TikTok with the group because no one knows anything better to small-talk about besides memes these days. The roast, toast, and speeches would be half-attended, with those in the corner playing on their phones. And this is if people even attended at all.”

Sigh.

***

If most people today would prefer to park themselves on the couch and scroll through social media rather than attend an event that honors a peer and involves riotous laughter for a few hours, then where are we as a culture?

“Do you know how excited I would be to have a group of ladies over to play bridge in the afternoon like Lucy and Ethel?” Kelly told me. “Fussing over finger sandwiches and hors d’oeuvres to host friends in my home to play cards and chitchat? It makes me sad that the general population is content with Netflix and doom scrolling. Why don’t they want more from life? I’m disappointed in this blasé mediocrity.”

I don’t know. Maybe they don’t know what they’re missing.

Even though my generation had to be much more autonomous and resourceful because nothing was available at the touch of a button, I do believe that young people are more stressed out today. They deal with more competition for everything, more demands on their time, longer work hours. Less time to just relax and chill out.

They have to be more guarded. Their photos, their behavior – their every move – could be broadcast online to the entire world at any given moment. They definitely couldn’t risk mooning a camera. There’s too much scrutiny everywhere. Maybe throwing caution to the wind is a bygone pleasure.

I truly believe the soul has been sucked out of living.

Our lives now are more constricted, less expansive.

No one group is to blame. And let’s face it – our addictive tools aren’t ever going to disappear. But we can recognize the problem and what it’s doing to us. I’m happy that Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and other sites) has reached a settlement of up to $18 billion for engineering its sites to be addictive to kids. I also believe that we should lock up cell phones in schools.

As for young adults, Tara did tell me that she’s found places where people are more open to communication. On cruises, for example, she finds that even strangers are likely to talk genuinely to each other. I’m not a cruise person, but this tracks; when they’re not as constrained by time or pressured by others’ judgments, people let their guards down. Maybe we need to follow a European model, reevaluate our 50-hour workweeks, and stop forcing employees to be phone-tethered to the office at night, on weekends, and on their ridiculously scarce vacation days.

“My mantra of the last year has been: stay open, warm, and inviting,” says Kelly. “There’s a movement I’ve seen lately (on social media, ironically) encouraging approaching others ‘in the wild’ to try and make friends, get a date, etc. You see someone at the mall with a nice smile? Tell them. What’s the worst that can happen? Of all the interactions documented, no one was ever rude. Most were eager to engage. When I go to the brewery across the street and sit at the bar, I always speak to someone who’s around me. More often than not, these strangers are pleasant and very kind. So far, I’ve scored one job offer, a recommendation for a car detail service, and a list of the best Italian restaurants in the city. And I always leave with a warm fuzzy feeling.”

I love that. When I go on walks and just say hello to people, I’m often surprised at how they light up.

But will things ever get back to where they were? Whimsy and playfulness and risk and surprise and teasing each other and flirting and celebrating rather than judging each other – will they ever come back? Is there even such a thing as throwing caution to the wind anymore?

And what about Cooper? He’s only a few months old. Will his life include any of those elements? Will he ever be able to just live messily?

***

Thank you to Tara and Kelly, who were essentially co-writers of this post!

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Due to popular demand, I am including, at the end of each blog post, the latest random diary entries that I’ve been posting on Facebook for “Throwback Thursday.” These are all taken absolutely verbatim from the lengthy diaries I kept between 1970 and 1987.

February 7, 1978 [age 22]:

[I was still living in the SF State dorms and was chairperson of the dorm film program] “I’ve decided to show a movie in our dorm floor’s bathroom sometime in the near future. Everyone thinks this is a cool idea.”

February 9, 1978 [age 22]:

“I wanted to go to the Boarding House tonight to see Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and Gene Clark of the Byrds, but no one was interested. Man, coming to San Francisco is not what I expected it to be. Where are the hippies??”

February 10, 1978 [age 22]:

“I’m proud of myself: I took apart our dorm room thermostat so it now goes over 70° (it used to read 70°, but – boy – it never really got there). I used my knife as a screwdriver and managed to figure out how to take out the metal thing that prevented the dial from turning higher than 70°. I also managed to hit myself in the jaw with my own fist. My mouth bled like mad!”

March 2, 1978 [age 22]:

”This hilarious thing happened last night. I’m very close to my weight goal now – I want to weigh 128, and I weigh 129 – so Kati and I had popcorn, and we used diet margarine in the self-butterer, and all the popcorn puffed up real good and then shrank into little curled-up worms.”

March 9, 1978 [age 22]:

“There was a huge exposé in the Phoenix [the SF State newspaper] today about 14 violations at PFM [the student dining hall company] uncovered by the Health Department, and at the same time, a list was placed in our mailboxes outlining the changes and additions to be introduced by PFM immediately. And I tell you, I couldn’t believe my eyes or my taste buds tonight. I had a hamburger that was twice as big as the slab of cheese on it, and great-tasting to boot! What a dream!”

March 24, 1978 [age 22]:

“How good [my dormmate] Kati is to me! Last week she brought me chicken soup, tropical fruit jello salad, wheat bread, and gingerbread cake – all homemade! Then last night we stayed at her parents’ house and she made me a huge French toast breakfast. I had SEVEN pieces. All just for helping her with her essays. She definitely got the short end of the stick!”

April 4, 1978 [age 22]:

“The story of my oral report in English class [I had a tremendous fear of public speaking]: At 8:30 this morning I popped a Valium I’d borrowed, and at 9:00 I had two shots of Sambuca, followed by toothpaste, Scope, and gum. About 3 minutes before class ended, though, the professor said that we had to do the rest of the reports next Thursday! Well, I got panicky. I knew I wouldn’t have another Valium on Thursday, and I knew I just couldn’t put this off one more day. So in a spontaneous act, I raised my hand (as everyone was packing to leave) and said, ‘Dr. Petitt, I won’t be here Thursday. Can I do it now?’ So I did. No problem at all, helped along by the fact that I was looking at two people who seemed to be vitally interested in what I was saying. I’m sure they were NOT.”

April 14, 1978 [age 22]:

“I was doing my laundry [in the dorm] today and some female just took it out of a dryer and piled it all on a chair, while it was still wet! I got even and opened the door to her dryer so her clothes wouldn’t dry. I think that was certainly justifiable, but it was also mean. I swear I’ll never do that again. And how sad, that that’s my entertainment for the day!”

April 15, 1978 [age 22]:

“[Name redacted] and I decided to smoke a little bit of dope she’s had for a year. I have little or no guilt about breaking my year-and-a-half-long abstinence, because I did it in moderation and with a good friend. One hilarious part: [Name redacted] was lighting a very small remnant of one of the joints for me and somehow I must’ve inhaled the flame ’cause it shot up and totally singed my nostrils and turned my eyelashes completely white.”