One Xmas ritual in our family is to clean the house from top to bottom to get ready for the new year. This year it’s got added drama because we renovated the house earlier and most of our possessions are still in the garage. For anyone that’s renovated a house … you will know what I mean! I have been barking orders at everyone in a military type fashion. I’m sure my Grandfather would be proud! In the big clean up and clear out, I found a poster a friend of mine had made our son when he was five. It read: Togman is deaf. This brought back the most fantastic memory of our son as a five year old who had made up a super hero called “Togman”. Our lad used to get into his togs, throw a towel around his neck and bellow: “TOOOOGMAAAN”. Quite often, it gave us a heck of a fright as our boy charged around the place in his incarnation as Togman. We asked him one day what was Togman’s super power. Thinking on this for a moment, he said: Togman is deaf.
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My husband went to Texas for two weeks a little while ago. For anyone that knows him, he can be rather naive about social interactions. For example, my husband can be a little frugal. The last time he went to America he brought us back key rings as gifts. Not exactly sexy, but he presented them to us in a beaming fashion and declared: “They were on sale. I’ve got hundreds of them”. In a similar vein, I got a nano ipod for my birthday. I never really wanted a nano ipod, but understand they have quite high street cred and value. Anyways, I was thankful for my present and then informed by Hubby as a kind of victory speech that the ipod had come “almost free” with the new computer. I kind of view ipod presents as the 21st century version of giving a toaster or new washing machine to your loved one. They are incredibly practical and cool technology, but they are kind of impersonal. It’s not like someone goes out and thinks: “Hey, she mentioned she really liked this artist, book etc”. Never mind. Presents are presents and one should never be ungrateful. I’m told it’s the thought that counts and the thought that counted was both items (key rings and ipod) were on sale or almost free! I have now taken pre-emptive action and make STRONG hints (i.e circled items in fliers) of what I would like as a gift. This is not to bag my husband, because I love him very much, but it is to put into perspective how my husband can sometimes be naive in terms of social exchanges with people (even those closest to him). Given that Barack Obama had just won an historic victory in the United States and hubby was ecstatic about it, I suggested it might be wise to keep those kinds of views to oneself over there in Texas. He looked at me as if I was a bit school maamish, rolled his eyes and said: “Of course I won’t”. I did, however, have the sneaking suspicion if I didn’t say something, he just might have!
I think the science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick was onto something with his views of Dystopia. As we’ve seen in the last week, the “winds of change” carry within them hopes of Utopia, but the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. We live in deepest, darkest suburbia in a tree-lined street where you don’t have to lock your doors or your car. The place is mainly inhabited by a mixture of people with young families and the elderly who have owned their homes since the suburb was created. They are the types of people who wave hello, stop for a chat, offer to look after your kids if you have to dash out somewhere in an emergency. When people think nostalgically about New Zealand, they would imagine a street inhabited by people like this.
Well, well. National’s in and Labour’s out. Not surprising, but even more scary is that Act is in with National and bringing the old codger Roger Douglas ever closer to power. One of the interesting things about this election and America’s one is that it signals the coming of age of Generation X. Both Key and Obama are people of Generation X not those of the Baby Boomers. I’m not displeased with the result. I didn’t vote National or Labour. I voted for a minor party that starts with Maori and ends with Party. In all conscience I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) vote for Labour after the Foreshore and Seabed Act. I couldn’t vote for National because, well, they’re National. Being in the same company as gumboot wearing hillbillies reminds me of the old Sesame Street song: “one of these things is not like the other”. And that would be me! Labour ran an incredibly negative campaign. I found their “Mary” ads a disgrace. If that ad was the answer for the Labour campaign, then I don’t know what the question was. I think it was probably extra-terrestrial. Definitely not terra firma.
