Graduations and elections a memory
The sounds of “Pomp and Circumstance” have faded with the breeze. Madera Unified School District has staged all its middle school promotions and high school graduations. I have always considered these rights of passage as mind-numbing.
About the last two months of my senior year at Madera High School, I realized that my classmates, some of whom I had shared nine months of my life with every year since kindergarten, would scatter to the four winds, many never to be seen again. About a third of us have reconnected with a group on Facebook.
My life and my world were pretty small then. This summer my former playmates and I will gather to celebrate the 45 years since we received our diplomas. Some days I’m not sure where those years went. When my rheumatoid arthritis flares with its aching and stiffness I know how long it has been since I was a kid with the ink not yet dry on my diploma. I really miss that girl even if at times she was a real knucklehead.
Is knucklehead a slur that can be used without people accusing you of being racist? I have a hard time keeping track of what is or isn’t an approved insult. Being nice all the time is one way to keep from offending the snowflakes, but that isn’t much fun.
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Is everybody glad that the primary election is over? No longer will our mailboxes be stuffed with campaign literature for a few months anyway. The television airwaves are no longer clogged with negative blather about who should occupy the governor’s mansion. Some of the early TV ads compared one of the candidates to the president and it wasn’t until almost the end of the spot that it identified it as an endorsement of another candidate.
Sometimes it seems all the television advertising is targeting the minds of twenty-somethings who have been smoking way too much cannabis. My husband’s frequent comment is, “Was that supposed to be funny?”
The insurance companies vie for clients with a relentless barrage of nonsense. They have developed characters and use them over and over until they become familiar to its viewers. Some celebrities become synonymous with the products they sell.
When looking for a new place to live last year, actor Jeff Goldstein constantly urged me to visit apartments.com because “change your apartment, change the world.” Actor J.K. Simmons narrates a batch of insurance commercials about mishaps and warnings to automobile and homeowners. The Aflac duck’s ads hover between funny and stupid.
We have an AARP membership, as my husband is 72. That organization must have an enormous mailing and postage budget. There is a piece of mail from these people at least twice a week.
Tuesday is a bit of an auspicious day in my life. On this day in 1930, my mother QuoVada Louise Kirk Hill was born. She would have been 88 years old. On this day in 1995, I began working in the retail advertising department at Madera Tribune. Selling ads was an excuse to get my foot in the door, as the saying goes. There were no openings in the editorial department at that time.
It has been an interesting journey and I look forward to a few more years.
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Have a great weekend.
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Readers, may contact Tami Jo Nix by emailing tamijonix@gmail.com or following @TamiJoNix on Twitter.
