OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

Monday is the weirdest day of the week since I retired. It is a relief, however, to not have the strain of the "it's Monday, back to work" syndrome.

Today, because my wife had her hip replaced two weeks ago and she's my usual barber, I decided to drive over to a nearby small town to an honest-to-god barber. It's been so many years since I had my hair cut by a barber (when I last did it cost $1.50), I had completely forgotten that barber shops are closed on Monday, to compensate for being open on Saturday.

The thought that there might be places not open 7 days a week, or at least 6 days a week, is so foreign nowadays. As is the idea of working your whole life for a single company. Nowadays you have to move from one company to another every two years or so just to keep your technical skills current. And to get any kind of significant raise. And to get ahead of the curve in lay-offs and company mergers/closings.

So, things change. "Future Shock" is here for sure for me and those of my generation. It's not the world I signed on to inhabit. In some ways it's better (the sound in theaters, for example, or the longevity of CD's versus vinyl), and in many ways it's worse (like so many single mothers, so few committed relationships, so many alienated teen-agers).

And it's impossible to communicate these differences and their effects adequately to those of younger generations who have only experienced half of them. Their outlooks are not my generation's outlooks and so everything is seen with different filters.

For example, to say that the average person was happier in the 50's inevitably brings out the retort, "except for the black person."

And what can I say? I wasn't black in the 50's. I don't truly know. But I've been watching the HBO series "The Wire" and Afro-American's as represented there don't seem very happy either. That is, if the person lives long enough to even notice they're unhappy.

You know, perhaps the person with the retort confuses happiness with freedom. And the two aren't the same. Some of the most unhappy people I've seen are those with the most freedom. And I found that when I became old enough to decide not to exercise all my freedoms so frequently and with such abandon, then my happiness index went up.

So maybe happiness comes from choice, making the right choice of what to do with all those freedoms we crave so much. Maybe in the 50's we didn't have as many freedoms, so the choices were fewer and easier. And maybe that made us happier.

I don't know. I earned my stripes as an adult in the 60's, about the wildest decade we've seen in a long time. I wouldn't trade my experiences from then for anything, but I'm sure glad I'm not still stuck in the chaos that passed for a society in those years.

Till next time.