June 25: Writing Prompt #176-21st Century Citizen

Do you belong in this day and age? Do you feel comfortable being a citizen of the 21st-century? If you do, explain why — and if you don’t, when in human history would you rather be?

If you had asked me this question when I was a little girl, I would have told you that I didn’t feel comfortable in my day and age, and that I would rather live in the Pioneer Days of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  This was, in part, because I was engrossed in her books and the Little House on the Prairie TV series with Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert. I was also attracted to how everything was a new discovery and life seemed much simpler to me. It was all about school, family, and the outdoors. 

Now, that I am older, I think about living in that time and realize how difficult life was for the pioneers. For me today, doing the laundry is very simple. I put a load in the washer, add detergent, and turn it on.  Then, I take it out of the washer, throw it in the dryer, and again, turn it on.  The hardest part is the last one where I have to fold and put away each item, and that’s only hard because I am too lazy to take the time to do it, so the laundry sits in a pile in the extra bedroom or worse, on my bedroom floor until I make myself go and take care of this mundane task.  Laundry was much more of a challenge during the days of the Wilder family.  Scrubbing each item of clothing on a wash board in the wash tub, then hanging to dry on a clothes line is much more time consuming and much less sanitary and efficient than today’s electronic appliances for washing and drying clothes.  Laundry was not the only difficult and necessary task of the day. Cooking was always from scratch. Tonight, we had frozen pizzas from a box and vegetable kabobs that were already cut up for me and put on kabob sticks inside Styrofoam and plastic wrap at the grocery store down the street.  Now, this is not normal dinner fare for us, but I suggested to my husband that we do something simple so he didn’t have to cook.  What did they do for a simple meal in pioneer days?  I’m not sure, but it still would have taken much more time and energy than our processed, frozen “TV Dinner” meal did tonight. 

Bottom line, I am NOW clearly feeling more comfortable in my day and age, but I think that’s because it is my generation. I AM a citizen of the 21^st century. It’s all I know, except for what I read in books, which is nothing like my day-to-day reality.  At 40, I’ve gotten used to living this life in this century, and it’s important for me to be comfortable with it and know it because it’s now becoming my kids’ generation, and I want to know what’s happening in their lives, what’s new and popular, what they have to face and understand to navigate their world successfully, and if I was living my life like Laura Ingalls Wilder, I would be so out of touch with  2 of the most important pieces of my life and my heart, my boys.