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PopLiFe Popular culture, or pop culture, (literally: "the culture of the people") consists of widespread cultural elements in any given society. Such elements are perpetuated through that society's vernacular language or an established lingua franca. It comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires and cultural 'moments' that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, consumption, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature. (Compare meme.) Popular culture often contrasts with a more exclusive, even elitist "high culture." March 18, 2007 Remembering When...
All the girls had ugly gym uniforms? But they were sooo comfy Remember
when gym class was NEVER co-ed?
Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids
got home from school?
What is the cheapest first class
postage you remember?
How
about
*ow* sanitary belts and "blue roses?" Remember
when lots of women
not going through chemotherapy
wore wigs?
Do you
remember when
people "went steady" and exchanged
...winding yarn around the back of your
boyfriend's gigantic When you
didn't have to think about where the car keys were
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles with bottle tops
Big
red chest coolers in corner grocery stores where you just
reach Remember
bringing your "empties" to the store Pull tabs on canned soda
that came all the way off Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum (agh) Hard Dentine? Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers A
"French letter" "Smile,
you're on Candid Camera?"
Sock
hops? Remember
when cereal prizes were things like submarines
Beanie and Cecil
Studebakers Bench seats? Station wagons called "woodies?"
Wringer washtubs? When Rob
and Laura Petrie and Breck girls? How about Gibson Girls? Shirley Temple curls? The Red Skelton Show? Ipana toothpaste? The
appetite suppressant called "Aids" When
"exercise equipment" meant a vibrating How about the sauna machines? An aspirin put in a Coca-cola? Or when
cigarette commercials were on TV, Black Underwood typewriters?
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders Remember drag flags and riding bikes with no helmets?
15 cent McDonald hamburgers?
When the McDonald's sign
measured its Jiffy
Pop Popcorn?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense
and Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin? Water balloons, peashooters and spitballs were the ultimate weapons? I love looking back fondly on the memories of things from the past that are just not around any more, but I have to say, I enjoy forward progress. Regardless of the time in which we live, now or then, there are very definite benefits and detriments. In the military, there was a saying, "The two best bases in the military are the one you just left and the one you're going to." We do tend to glamorize the past, allowing time and nostalgia to gild the way things really were, and remember the good parts while glossing over the bad. I don't meet many people who are happy where they are, today, content with what has been created in their life. It is so easy to mire ourselves in the past, grieving for what used to be and fearing what is to come. But isn't that a sad way to live? How lovely to live in the now, accepting the challenges and lessons that life presents to us graciously and eagerly awaiting the miracles and blessings that are to come. To me, the best way to honor the life that we have been given and to acknowledge the gift that it is would be to experience it to the fullest, making it all it can be and not wasting a single moment of it. Life is
what we make of it and every second carries
within it the two words that are absolutely
pregnant with all possibilities: "until
now."
(That's OK, Don't) Send In the Clowns People Who Have Clearly Lost Their Minds Anorexia Versus Genetics; Media Pressure Versus Body Type |
