older and wiser

The other day I was in the express line at the grocery store (story of my life).
You know, the one that says 8 Items or less.
I had 10. I know. I'm one of those people.
Or at least one of those people when every other line is super long and I'm in a huge hurry.
But in defense of myself, two of the items were 2 for the price of 1 so that doesn't really count does it?

Anyhow there was an older gentlemen behind me and I apologized for having slightly over the amount and explained that I was in a rush to do the after school pick-up.
He was so sweet and joked that the beauty of retirement is that you no longer have to rush to anything.
He also said he had a daughter around my age and that she's always in a hurry, working and looking after her daughter and that she's always so busy.
He also said he felt sorry for my generation because of all the rushing around we do and stressing about so much more than he ever had to.
He said that he thought that technology has robbed us of our freedom and privacy.
And that these days we have too much choice, too many "things".
I know, all this introspection in the 2 minutes we were in the express line!

But I couldn't have agreed with him more.
In fact these days I find myself fantasizing about finding a time machine and going back to 1950.
When stores were closed on the weekends and families just simply spent time together.
There weren't 800 channels to choose from, no computers, no such thing as youtube, facebook, twitter and whatever else sucks up your free time.
Kids didn't have endless amounts of "play-dates" or themed birthday parties or the multitude of after-school activities to choose from.
Don't even get me started on the housing prices..
Heck even the fashions back then were just so much more simple.
Then again, I guess not too much has changed since then in some ways..

Anyhow, this is now and that was then and no amount of complaining about it will make any difference.
Evolve or die I guess.
But that's not to say that I'm going to try my best to do less rushing and do more living in the future.

Oh and is it weird that I almost wanted to ask for that elderly gentleman's number so I could meet him for a cup of coffee?
Something tells me that he has a whole lifetime of interesting stories to tell and plenty of time to do so.
Only I was in too much of a rush..

well that, and yeah, that would have been weird.