Beech Tree News Network

Earlier in the week, I was in my garden picking butter beans when the song, “Yes We Have No Bananas,” came to mind.  I hadn’t thought of that song in years.  I was introduced to the banana song by Mitch Miller, the jazz musician who was the star of the NBC show, “Sing Along With Mitch,” during the 1960s.  The show was home to the bouncing ball, which Mitch would encourage the TV audience to follow as it bounced above the lyrics displayed on the screen.  The little white ball would land on each word to signal that word’s turn, staying to signal length and duration of beat, like a silent metronome, before hopping off to the next word.

I miss Mitch.  More than him, I miss the days of Mitch.  We were different people then, as a people, I mean.  We were more easily entertained by simple things, like songs about bananas.  My granddaughter is seven years old, and I wonder if, even at that young age, she would find Mitch entertaining.  I have my doubts.

My sister-in-law, Charlotte, and I have often speculated that our generation will never live as long as our parents’ or even our grandparents’ generation has.  We attribute our looming shortened years to the stress we endure on a daily basis.  It’s not that we don’t recognize the stress our parents went through, it’s just that today’s stress is of a different sort.

Our parents and grandparents endured the stress of large families, dwindling food supplies, unfavorable working conditions, and war and its consequences, namely the draft, the being forced to go fight in the war.  Any one of those things could cause stress, but it is a different kind of stress than we experience today, because of one factor.  Those stress inducers were out of their control.  They had large families because they didn’t have access to birth control.  The large families put a strain on food supply.  They farmed to keep their families fed then also took side jobs in dangerous factories that had no unions or workers compensation.  They went to war because they were required to by law.

(I want to pause here to say, there is no amount of stress endured by any generation that can compare to the PTSD soldiers endured and continue to endure because of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Europe and the South Pacific.  That is a stress all its own, and I hurt for any soldier of any generation who has had to go through that.)

The stress our parents and grandparents experienced was because of things that happened to them.  Today, most of our stress is because of what we are expected to make happen.  We are expected to make the most of our opportunities, make informed choices, make sure our kids are keeping up, and make sure we don’t waste time or resources.   LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE, as the plaques hanging in our homes remind us.

I heard a story recently that demonstrates the difference in attitudes between generations.  This particular person’s mom had come from a large family—somewhere in the umpteen number of children.  The family was going to town in the car, packed in like sardines, when one of the back doors came open. One of the boys fell out of the car and rolled down a steep graveled bank near a railroad track.  The dad just kept driving.  The mom looked at the dad and said, “Aren’t you going to turn around and go get him?”  The dad said, “He’s gotta be dead.  There’s no way he coulda survived that fall.”  The dad finally relented and turned back for his son.  They found him making his way back up the steep bank, pretty beat up, but nonetheless alive.

If that had happened to my generation, we would have called an ambulance, called everybody we knew to follow us to the hospital then sued the car manufacturer for making a faulty back door.  My generation is big on assigning blame, hence the stress factor; because if you’re going to blame others for the choices they make, you have to eventually point the finger at yourself for the unfavorable results of the choices you make.  

The bouncing ball my generation follows is that small rubber crazy ball you get for a quarter from a bubble gum machine.  Once it is set in motion, you never know who or what it might hit or where it’s going to land.  I miss Mitch and his little white ball.  It was so much easier to follow.