I remember seeing a photo, probably at the end of the war. A man hanging on the entrance to a train. Looking at the platform. Another man held a woman in a firm embrace. Her feet in the air. A loving kiss. The man on the train had a genuine smile. The two on the platform reunited. A man and woman, in love. Welcomed home after what had probably been a few years of war overseas.
Or the picture of a woman running to the waiting arms of a man. A hand made sign hanging outside reads “Welcome home Hector” A small boy close on the heels of his mother, racing to the loving arms of the man that would return home, changed forever, but home at last. A big smile on all three would be recorded forever.
In times square, faces, faces and more faces all with smiles.
A petty officer dances on the streets as a nearby gal watches with a joy filled smile.
The look on a person’s face tells a story that words struggle to convey. “A picture is worth a thousand words” pops into my head.
For me? I don’t remember moments that made my generation dance in the streets, kissing a stranger in Times Square, or confetti flung from windows high above the streets as the “world celebrates” a single event.
Instead, I remember:
Iran-Iraq War, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square Massacre, AIDS Epidemic, Chernobyl Disaster, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Olympics Boycott, Iran Hostage Crisis, Emergence of disco, Breakup of the Beatles, Elvis Dies, Ted Bundy, Watergate and the end of the Vietnam Conflict.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t have things that made me smile. I honestly believe there was a better platform for my “boomer” friends. Don’t get me wrong, Boomers had their fair share of hard times… but gen X? We had “World Hunger” & “AIDS” celebrations. We are the “Forgotten, Latchkey” generation. So what made us smile? Ask any genX about “MTV” and fond memories are almost always the response. Or say the words “Asteroids” and see a bit of a grin start to form. Or ask them what it is about the phrase “gag me with a spoon” Ask them if they knew any “headbangers” or maybe ask them about which of the “brat pack” they most identify with…
Every generation has something to smile about, some are big events with streets of confetti, some are sneaking cigarettes and watching MTV before your friend’s dad gets home and tells everyone to get outside and not come home until the street lights are on.
I see the smiles recorded in history on a train platform, in times Square, On a big screen watching the Breakfast Club… and I realized something… all those before us, all those after us and even ourselves, we all have a smile to talk about. We all have a fond memory, of something. We can all share something that was valuable… but, like so many before us, we will all pass into the land of memories. Collected in a shoebox, a hard drive. Maybe a slab of granite in some StPaul suburb, a mothers last effort to preserve that memory engraved into a headstone, forgotten after only a generation or two… a year connected to another year by only a small “dash”… a dash that represents all the smiles of joy, screams of sorrow, groans of discomfort and days of remembering.
So many years before me, so many years after me, so many memories in my “dash” I want my dash to be one of joy to those I have influenced, I want my dash to be remembered for the next 40 years by anyone I meet as a memory filled with a smile on their face. I will be forgotten one day, one day I will simply be a picture in a shoe box that hears the words “Mommy? Who is this man? Is he my great, great grandpa? He has a nice smile!”
I pray your legacy outlives your life and that your smile makes another person’s smile just a little bit warmer.
God Bless, and “Rock on dude”, Charlie
