.........."We don't know that we don't know what we don't know."......
And there are two specific dangers in this; 1) a lot of people are just ignorant about it, 2) many who are not necessarily ignorant about it exploit the ignorance of others. This is played upon heavily in the rhetoric............. I'll stop with that before I go "political."
I will say that this year is the first year in 30+ years of being at this house that the grass has gotten literally knee-high before it was dry enough to mow. My dad tried it too early and stuck his mower (
really stuck his mower) in my yard. It was two days before it was dry enough to extract it - and then it started raining again. This is the first year in fifteen years I have prepped my wifes raised beds, and when I wen to get her annuals at a farm market, there was a literal traffic jam on the state route in front of it with people trying to get in to get their stuff. Parking lot was full and there was a line at the register at least fifty feet long. Elbow to elbow, but everyone was actually polite.
"I remember when (from when I was a kid)...."
is started snowing in December and we didn't see green grass until the end of March;
Christmas was always accompanied by beautiful blanket of snow with no wind and temps you could endure without special clothing;
summers were calm, sunny and pleasant with temps in the high seventies to very low eighties and low humidity;
Easter Sunday was cool, dry and sunny - "perfect spring weather";
the Fourth of July was always sunny, dry, warm and pleasant;
I loved the Army and it was all great and wonderful, because that's what I remember and talk about, plus I had a wonderful childhood.
In Reality (understanding the mid-sixties are "recent memory" to many here):
I specifically remember
one spring where it seemed as though we hadn't seen green grass since October. In 1978, we had one really wicked winter - people died;
I remember two Christmases specifically when Christmas morning was crisp, bright, white and the wind wasn't howling;
I remember the summers of 65 and 66 (?) having some particularly hot days, when my mom or an aunt warned us to stay out of the sun, keep our shirts on and once on of them made me wear "suntan lotion" to keep me from baking my ears off;
I specifically remember ONE Easter Sunday when it was wonderful outside and there are couple photos from that day - the rest were probably gray and wet;
Fourth of July, 1968, when there were massive floods, washing out large stone railroad trestles, trapping people from reaching roads to make it to town and water, water everywhere. As a second-grader, it seemed cataclysmic. To some - it was, depending on where you were at the time.
The things I remember and talk about regarding my Army stints and my childhood make it seem as though both were wonderful and rosy. Not so much on either count, but most of us choose to dwell on the rare finer points of our own short histories. I know a lot of people who have had it much worse than I and they do they same thing - "Good ol' Days Syndrome" - "selective memory."
What's Weird and what's Normal?
I don't mean to jump in here like I've got it all figured out because I don't. I'm just musing about my own distorted observations which I started to question several years ago. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what last year was like, but I am sure I complained about it based on what I thought it
should be like compared to what it really was like. I think I've figured out that there are FOUR days in a year in NW Ohio that I consider to be "perfect" days - days where the weather acts like I think it should. I guess I think weird is normal in that respect. Oh, don't think I take it in stride - I grumble about it a lot. Mother Nature loves messing with me - she makes it lovely out when I have to be inside and makes it miserable out when I have to be outside.