It is a strange feeling, this one.  I am now old and stale, I am now out of it.  No longer hip.  A fuddy-duddy in a cardigan sweater (I just got one awhile ago to Sally’s chagrin).  I am simply not cool.  Not anymore, anyway.  Who woulda thunk that?!

My first inkling of this happening was my lack of interest in the gene pool.  I found that I didn’t care to even walk the pool deck to look anymore.  I mean, a prime breeding sample can still turn my head but it’s mostly out of habit now.  I am simply not a participant.  Not even part of the audience, really.  And it is the gene pool competition that keeps you on your toes, so to speak (well, elbows and toes to be more precise).  One becomes less ‘with it’ when there seems no point. 

I also seemed to lose interest in gadgets.  I mean, I still like them and all.  Gimme lots of toggle switches…………….mmmmmmmm, boy!  But, if you are really in the gadget game, you follow the latest news, the latest models, the new inventions.  I don’t even have a TV anymore.  There are all sorts of things out there that ‘connect’ me to faces, tubes, text and  tweeters and I just don’t care.  How does one stay hip when one is so apathetic?

All this slapped me upside the head when I went into Vancouver for the first time in almost 18 months.  Cost me $75.oo to get on a ferry and it was one I had never even seen before!  It used to be that I knew each and every ferry better than members of my own family and I found myself on one that doesn’t even look like the others.  The floor plans were different.  I didn’t like that.  Fussed a bit.  You know?  Like an old grump?  Sally and I even ‘lost’ each other when we agreed to meet at a certain location.  Default result: met at the car.  Man, that is sad!

Then there was the Canada line.  Too much for me but Sally took it.  Bought tickets willy nilly not having a clue as to how much she really needed or even where she was going.  Don’t forget: the skytrain stations are in locations that we didn’t use to hang around before.  She once found herself at the foot of Cambie!  A few short years ago, the foot of Cambie was nothing.  Empty.  Nada.  Now there’s a loop and a station and things go off in different directions.  We didn’t know.

I suppose being hip is less about things and novelty than it is about attitude.  I still have a ‘hip’ attitude but, to be fair, it is all about being ‘hip’ in other things now.  I was ‘cool’ when it came to talkin’ wood.  I know something about wood.  More than the average urban guy, that’s for sure.  So, I could talk ‘trusses’ and stuff, edge-grain, heart-wood and things of that nature.  But, I confess that there were few overlaps in the urban/rural conversation and it was painfully obvious that I was listing more to the rural side. 

I am really glad I left my gumboots in the truck.