Confronting One’s Inner Fogey

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(Published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 10/26/2005)

At the age of fifty-three, suddenly I am an old fogey. Seemingly overnight, I have been catapulted from the generation that set the trends, to one that is lagging further and further behind in its perception of what is cool.

The first sign of this came a few years ago when I found myself trying to explain the phenomenon of the Beatles to my children. “When I was your age the Beatles were considered to be cutting edge,” I told them, thinking of the lipstick kisses I had once so lovingly planted on Paul’s Tiger Beat photo. They see Paul as an old guy with gray hair who writes hopelessly boring melodies.

Another sign of old fogeydom came soon after when my son handed me a list of CDs he wanted for his birthday. None of the bands sounded remotely familiar, and they mostly had names that seemed like they might be related to criminal activity. Continue reading →

Bowling – Still A Great American Tradition

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(An essay from my Beach Reporter column 4/23/92.)

If you want to experience life the way it was before Evian water and no-smoking sections, try a visit to your local bowling alley. In a world where trends appear and disappear in a nanosecond, and technology changes at warp speed, bowling alleys remain locked in time.

I probably wouldn’t be hanging around bowling alleys if it weren’t for my children. I do a lot of things I wouldn’t normally do because of them. That is the wonderful thing and the terrible thing about being a parent.

My little boy joined a bowling league last September with his best friend Jack, and they bowl every Thursday afternoon. The league is called Bumper Kids, and they put these inflatable blue bumpers in the alleys, so the ball stays more or less in the lane. It’s a very good thing they put bumpers there because when a six year-old throws a bowling ball you never know where it’s going to end up. Continue reading →

Building a Better Refrigerator

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(This was one of my columns from 11/5/92. Eerily prescient…)

It’s probably too late for me to get in on the $30 million prize being offered by a group of the nation’s utilities to groups of inventors to build a better refrigerator. But I’ll tell you what – if they want my suggestions, I will only charge them a cool million. I have very simple needs.

The first mistake the utilities are making is in asking a group of scientists to design a better refrigerator. What are they going to do – sit around in a windowless room with their atom and molecule models and talk in numerical equations?

I’ve given this a lot of thought. Refrigerators have occupied a very special place in my life. I figure I’ve spent thousands of hours staring into their vast coldness trying to figure out the mysteries of life and whether or not you can scrape the fur off a piece of bologna, eat it, and still live. Continue reading →

So Many Things To Worry About, So Little Time

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(My newspaper column from The Beach Reporter 8/15/91.)

I am worried that I spend too much time worrying about things. It goes beyond being a mother, although a good amount of my worrying time is directed toward my children. Sometimes my worrying is global in nature. I worry about repression in China, terrorism, and the hole in the ozone layer.

I blame this syndrome partly on CNN, partly on the fact that I read several newspapers a day, and partly on the fact that I am a woman. Men don’t worry about the same things as women.
Men worry about how they are going to pay for college, even though their child is only a year old. Women worry about whether that same child is getting enough green vegetables, and are his feet turning in just a little?

Maybe if I stopped absorbing all this news every day I could lead a happy-go-lucky, worry-free life of ignorance. I wouldn’t know that the lead in the wrapper that seals the cork of wine bottles may cause lead poisoning. I wouldn’t know that my cutting board is a haven for a hundred strains of bacteria. I wouldn’t worry about parasites in sushi, pesticides on apples, or what’s really in a hot dog.

Continue reading →