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the good old days

We're all hanging around the picnic table, full and happy. Good friends and family all. The littles are splashing around in the creek with the dogs. It's a Norman Rockwell scene. Granny speaks up.

"You youngsters have it so good. Back in my day, they had laws against public nudity. Women weren't even allowed to go topless, as if their nipples were somehow different from mens!"

Several of the adults cast knowing looks at each other, rolling their eyes in a 'here she goes again' sort of way. Good old Granny. You could always count on her for an in depth rehashing of how good we kids have it today. I thought her notions curious and strange. Why on earth would anyone want to think that way? It just didn't make good sense. But Granny was odd like that. She always acted as if the world was against her when it really wasn't. Maybe it was, once. Maybe the world had changed and instead of leaving Granny behind, it had merely caught up to her.

Quirky in an almost depressingly modern sort of way, she was my favorite member of our polhome. Granny claimed to have been doing group marriage long before it came into style, but Granny made a lot of claims like that. Yet not a one of us have ever caught her in a lie. A legend unto herself, no one really knows how old Granny is. I once stumbled across some of her writings she'd left up in a fit of distraction. She's remarkably well versed in nutrateleplasty, expert level status from the looks of it. In fact, I wouldn't have even been able to follow her musings at all if I hadn't recently taken a class on the subject myself.

She takes an inhalation from her cannabinhaler and keeps rolling. "In fact, kiddies, in my day, we weren't even allowed to openly buy, grow, or consume the very things that keep us healthy. People forgot that food and medicine come from plants and animals so they made laws regulating supplements into ineffectiveness, poisoned our water and soil to strip all minerals and nutrients from our food, which they then ran all sorts of misinformed and poorly intentioned experiments upon, not like our forced diversity GMO programs we have now, mind you, but rather forced obsolescence! Can you believe that nonsense? The very idea. Almost as if they were trying to wipe out every single life form on the planet mindlessly, relentlessly - forever." She shudders.

"Granny, you haven't been hitting that hard enough, I think. Why don't you boost the intake valve on that bad boy?" That was Clarke, her first boy. Always such a good boy. So helpful. I hated him. Seventy years my senior and still such a mama's boy. She waves him off with a dismissive hand but adjusts the nozzle anyway.

"Oh yes, and don't even get me started on this! Why, back in my day, I had to HIDE to go take my medication. No, don't look at me like that; I swear, it's true. How the hell do you think I became such a good explorer? Swimming holes don't just find themselves, you know." With that, she lowered her guideline rope so that her feet could dangle in the water. "Furthermore, do you kids remember the story about Qatana?"

Groans peal out from friends and polfam alike dangling from the tangled canopy spanning the water. Cries of "Yes, Granny, we remember the story. Please, please, please don't tell us again how rigging used to be thought of as dirty. We've heard it a million times. What does all that ancient history have to do with anything?"

"Ancient history, my ass!" Granny harrumphes and lowers herself into the drift, leaning back into her impromptu arm chair. "These damn youngsters today have it so good and they don't even know it."

Learn more about this author, T. Sunshine Love.
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