Categories: uncategorized
Date: 21 June 2006 21:02:25
I guess it's just that I'm now feeling old and all grown-up. I'd done the jobmortgagehusbandcarkid thing (in that order). But it was only last month when I got to the big 3-0 that I started to notice how much the world has changed since I was 'young'. I'm not about to launch into ramblings about the 'good old days', but I certainly am going to comment on how 'these days aren't like they used to be'.
Take meeting I attended the other week: Two, shirt and tie clad, greying gentlemen and I, sat with pen and paper in hand, discussing how to stop people getting wet feet. Pretty normal. There's always been a significant majority of people in my profession who are male and not as young as they used to be. There's always talking in meetings, and often scribbling notes on a piece of paper with a pen helps to jog the memory when you wake from the 'dropping off' that often occurs in meetings where the majority of talking is done by just one of the old grey ones. What was not so normal was the dress of the men.
Shirts and ties have remain unchanged for decades; unless you go for a very trendy cut, I'd bet that the shirts worn today are pretty identical to those worn by our fathers and their fathers. What is different is the shirt's pocket. In the 'good old days' (oops, it just slipped in there!) men would sit in meetings with an ink stain from the aforementioned pen clearly visible at the base of the pocket. Pens were carried in pockets. Pens leaked. That was the way things were. Today pens don't leak, but neither are they carried in shirt pockets. At the meeting I discover a new trend has emerged without me noticing. Both men sat there with ink-free but extremely misshapen shirt pockets... with mobile phones poking out.
Shirt pockets were not designed to carry phones, but it seems that everyone is using them for this purpose now. These days that's the way things are. And I feel old.