Then And Now

Darla McCorkle

When I was 19 I got married. I was not pregnant. It was much worse, I was in love. He wasn’t even my first love, but I sure thought he was The Love of my Life at the time. So, we got married.  Not only did we get married, I left Texas and went to North Carolina the same week. The first month I was there, he got deployed to Somalia. I was in a crappy apartment full of second hand furniture and a military ID. I hadn’t even learned to drive his car, a stick-shift, when he left! 

The cellular phone was actually attached to the car back then and to use it was something like a $1,000 a minute. For my family to reach me meant calling the apartment and it would cost like $100 a minute. My sister and I wrote a lot of letters. 

Can you imagine? Think of a 19 year old you know right now. Atticus Gregory is 19. The thought of him going to North Carolina without a cellphone, in my jeep, he can’t drive stick either, without a credit card, or a job, and knows no one there, would make me hurl. 

And my story is not unique! 

I could gather a group of 50-somethings at Skinners this weekend and have them a two page questionnaire covering their actions from 16 to 21 and you’d not find one concerned parent in their answers.

I used to think, “Oh it was safer back then, it was a different time.”

No it wasn’t! 

Late 70s into the 80s we had kids on milk cartons, stranger danger, Ted Bundy, Solid Gold dancers, Friday Night Videos, MTV, Boy George and Motley Crue. There was no phone in our pocket to ping off cell towers to triangulate our location. We were in fields smoking and drinking and swearing. We were not safe! In fact, I distinctly remember being drunk in a car with my friend, having car trouble and getting into a car with a stranger on a Route 287 unlit road at 1:30 in the stupid morning. And felt relieved I didn’t have to call and wake up my parents to come get us! Relieved!! We could’ve died. We were serial killer bait! But, a serial killer was better than waking up your mama to come get ya! 

But seriously, can you imagine waving goodbye to your 19 year old daughter to go live SIX states away? With no cellphone, just a landline and an answering machine! To give you an idea of the recklessness, I lived in the same apartment complex Army Sgt. Kenneth Junior French was partying at right before he walked down the street into a restaurant and opened fire, killing four people and injuring eight others. He was upset over Clinton’s “don’t ask don’t tell policy.” It hit national news and my mama didn’t call me. She may have, I may have not been home.

I’m telling you, if you were born in the 70s that elderly parent you are having to check on all the time, who shouldn’t still be driving, can’t hear, sometimes gets their medicine mixed up, and can’t always work their phone doesn’t deserve you! They don’t deserve the care and energy you are putting into them. They had you sleeping, passed out in the back of a truck on a Friday night scared to call them! They shipped you off to college or to a husband, or both, with no further questions asked and no credit card! Right now you know the name of all their doctors and they stopped making appointments for you when the pediatrician stopped seeing you. You could’ve died so many times before they even noticed you were gone! 

I’m telling you all this because I know a lot of us are tag-teaming our elderly parents with other relatives. Everyone is “checking on mama.” Well, before you run yourself ragged take a minute and remember mama primed you to get kidnapped or murdered on many a night. As we all move into parenting our parents, be that 70s parent. Chain smoke in the house, never have sunscreen, use DEET on them, and yell at them when they wake you up!