Lost, Not Stolen

     Well, despite my telephone calls to the police, more calls to the lost-and-found, and scouring every inch of our car, I've concluded that my camera was lost, not stolen. How do I know?

     The first thing is, I'm pretty sure we locked the car on vacation, and there was no sign of forced entry. And nothing else in the car was missing.

     But the real reason I think it was lost, not stolen, requires a bit of explanation.

     To begin with, we were visiting Cape Cod, Mass., which attracts a reasonably well-heeled, middle-class type of visitor. We spent most of our time in Falmouth, which is among the more upscale towns on the Cape. Are you sensing my prejudice here? White, middle class people don't steal things, do they?

     Also, most of the people roaming the Falmouth streets after Labor Day are old enough to have kids in college or beyond. There are a lot of retired people living on Cape Cod. Retired people don't pilfer things out of cars.

     But here's what really convinced me. I have just started volunteering at our local community college, as a writing tutor for students who want help on the essays and papers they have to produce for English, history, sociology and any other class requiring written work. When I was applying for the position (yes, there was an application, an interview, and two writing tests) the head of the writing center warned me that the students might not be like the kinds of kids I was used to. They are not the sons and daughters of upper-middle-class professionals, the kids taking AP courses and aiming for law school, grad school or med school.

     According to the university website almost 50% of students "claim minority status," which is the highest percentage of minority students of any college in the New York state system. And the writing coordinator told me that for some of the kids English is neither the first language they learned, nor the language they speak at home.

     So I went to my first session on Thursday. I was heading off to another  appointment later in the day, so I brought along my laptop computer, a small bag of clothes, my cellphone and a few other things that were all tossed into the backseat. The parking lot was pretty full, but I also saw a city bus pull up and drop off a group of kids, about half males and half females, all of them nonwhite.

     I found a parking space. I slipped on a sports jacket. I locked the car. And I walked off to the library where I would start my new "job."

     I reported for duty at the writing center, and found the whole experience very interesting -- a topic for another blog post -- and then finally, three hours later, I walked back across campus, past a gaggle of kids waiting for a bus, and found my car. I pressed the button on my key to unlock the doors. I slipped into the driver's seat. And that's when I noticed that the window on the front passenger's side of the car was wide open!

     I turned quickly to check my backseat. The pile of stuff was still lying there, untouched. My cellphone was propped up against a bag. My laptop computer sat on top, just the way I'd left it.

     Obviously, when I'd parked my car, I'd buzzed the window down, instead of up. And so, despite having left my car wide open, with laptop in full view, at the multicultural community college, full of a diverse group of kids in their late teens and 20s, nothing had been touched. So how could my camera have been stolen out of a locked car in tony Falmouth, Mass.?
    

Has This Ever Happened to You?

     Last week B and I took a little vacation on Cape Cod. We packed B's minivan to the gills with pretty much everything we own, including my Canon digital camera. As soon as we arrived at our rental -- a small house, but right on the bay -- I started taking lots of pictures, including many shots of the incredible view we had out our kitchen and living room windows, overlooking Buzzard's Bay, with the Bourne Bridge way off in the distance.

     I took pictures of the sunset. I took pictures of the fishing boats that came by in the morning, and the big container ships that passed by out in the channel. I photographed the seagulls that perched on our rocks. I took pictures of our friends who retired to the Cape a few years ago. And I took pictures of Falmouth, Hyannis, Brewster, Eastham. All beautiful pictures.

     And then, yesterday, when we went to pack up the car, I could not find my camera. I remembered putting it in the car the day before. It was in the back seat, I know. But I looked all over the back seat, under the front seat, all around the back of the car, even under the car in the driveway in case it fell out.

     Nothing.

     I called the lost-and-found at the Falmouth Visitors Center, and I phoned the police. There was no sign of any camera that had been turned in. The police officer on the phone was very nice. She took my number, in case someone came in with a camera. She suggested I try the local pawn shop. Really? I said. Oh, sure, she replied. I've seen it all.

    I didn't go in to the pawn shop. That seemed ridiculous. And honestly, I don't know why I'm revealing all this. It seems unlikely, but the camera must have fallen out of the car, somehow, maybe when I was grabbing my jacket or tossing in that souvenir I bought. I feel like a complete lame brain. But, come on, you've probably left something behind on vacation, at some point, haven't you?

     Meanwhile, these two pictures of Cape Cod are from a previous visit . . . because, obviously, I don't have any pictures to show from this trip.

A View of the Kennedys

     Yesterday B and I went over and took a look at the Kennedy compound. Maybe because it's the end of summer, and the beach looks empty and lonely, or maybe it's because the house is vacant, no one living there, but the place seemed abandoned, almost haunted.

     It reminded me, in just two more months we will be marking the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. It was November 22, 1963.

     B and I didn't actually go into the compound. As far as I know, it is never open to the public. What really happened is that B and I, on a week's vacation on Cape Cod, took a drive over to Hyannis. We'd read about some artist's shanties located in a harborside park, and we thought it would be fun to go hang out.

     The artist's shanties turned out to be an extreme disappointment -- just a little tourist trap with overpriced crafts and photos -- although the trip was saved by a run across the street to find some very tasty clam chowder.

    But while we were there we saw a sign for a harbor excursion boat. It was leaving for a cruise at 2 p.m. We hadn't planned on doing anything like that, but it was only an hour and fifteen minutes long, so we purchased tickets, for $20 each, and climbed aboard.

     A father and son team ran the boat, and they skippered us out of the harbor, showing us a series of old lighthouses, multimillion-dollar estates along the coastline, a tower marking where the Cape Wind project would be located.

     There has been for several years now a proposal to build a series of windmills along a sandbar in Nantucket Sound. It is controversial because while the windmills would produce environmentally friendly electricity, they also have the potential to disturb some birds. More significantly, they would also disturb the view from many of those multimillion-dollar estates -- one of those estates being the Kennedy compound, so Sen. Edward Kennedy was a powerful opponent of the project. What's happening now, since Ted Kennedy has left us, I do not know.

     Anyway, on the way back to the dock, the captain swung around Hyannisport and showed us the Kennedy compound. You can't see much of it from shore -- it's cordoned off by winding streets and tall hedges -- but you can see it remarkably well, and up pretty close, from the water.

     If you are old enough to remember 50 years ago, and those old film clips of Camelot, with young Kennedys playing touch football on the lawn, sailing in the bay, healthy, toothy, kids in tow, you can't possibly take in this scene without feeling some nostalgia, a sinking in your gut as the old newsreels play in your mind.

     According to our guide, Ted Kennedy moved into the main house after his mother Rose died in 1995, and he used it as his main residence until his death in 2009. But while a number of Kennedys still live in the six-acre compound, the main house has been empty ever since. Apparently there are plans to open the house to the public, perhaps turn it into some kind of monument or museum, but all that would be sometime in the future.

     Last summer, pop singer Taylor Swift bought a house down the street, when she was going out with Conor Kennedy, grandson of Robert F. Kennedy. That didn't last long, our young guide quipped. But rumor has it Swift made a million dollars when she sold the house earlier this year. Conor is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Mary Richardson Kennedy. The two had a troubled marriage, and they were already estranged last year when Mary, Conor's mother, committed suicide.

     I guess we all have our own thoughts, our own opinions about the Kennedys. Joseph Kennedy, the wealthy patriarch, made his money under questionable circumstances. John F. Kennedy, icon of his era, was later revealed to be something of a sexual predator. Bobby Kennedy, attorney general to his older brother, senator from New York and passionate anti-war presidential candidate, was a man who many hailed as a visionary, while others scorned him as just another calculating, self-serving politician. And Edward Kennedy . . . he had his own brush with disaster at Chappaquiddick in 1969, but in many people's eyes he redeemed himself with his long career in the U. S. Senate.

     There's nothing I can add to the Kennedy legacy, the Kennedy mystique. But I do remember those heady, historic days. I remember my Irish Catholic mother was a fan; my more conservative, indifferent Protestant father remained unimpressed. But back then I wished my father was half as cool as John Kennedy; and I was in love with Caroline, as I'm sure many young women fell in love with John-John, who we all remember died when his plane crashed off Martha's Vineyard in 1999.

     Love 'em or hate 'em, they were a great American family. But as their old house suggests, sitting forlornly on the windy beach, it all seems long ago and far away.

Nostalgic About . . . What?

     Remember the days when your kids were young, and you'd be driving them to soccer or ballet class or some other after-school activity, and your kid would sit in the backseat of the car with a friend or two, and they'd be talking about their lives and what was going on with their friends . . .  and you'd be listening in, finding out what was really going on in their world?

     Well, I got a glimpse of that the other day. I drove up to a football game (Army vs. Stanford) last weekend with my daughter, her boyfriend, and a college friend of my daughter's. On the way, they talked about the game, where we were going to park, how to pick up tickets at the will-call window, when they would be meeting up with a couple of their other friends.

     On the way home after the game (Stanford won 34-20), they started talking about their jobs. My daughter's college friend now works for a public relations company. She does market research. The point of her job is to connect her clients' products with new trends, and especially social media trends.

     So what's the latest trend, according to this young, media-savvy market researcher? Nostalgia. Nostalgia for what? You'd better be sitting down for this. Nostalgia for the 1990s.

     I still watch reruns of Seinfeld. I didn't even know that the '90s were over! The oldies stations on my SiriusXM radio cover the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. The station I have for what I think of as hip, up-to-date music is ... you guessed it, the station playing music from the '90s -- Radiohead, U2, Green Day, Dave Matthews. I like Dave Matthews.

    But to these late 20-somethings, the 1990s were their growing-up years. They remembered their TV shows, which did not include Seinfeld but did include Dawson's Creek, Ally McBeal, Family Matters, Boy Meets World  ... and my daughter did like The X Files.

     They remembered the movies:  Jurassic Park, Titanic, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Romeo and Juliet.

     The young woman talked about a Forrest Gump themed event that she'd been to, which somehow was tied in to a particular brand of vodka, and a party with a Red Hot Chili Peppers theme that was associated with some other product. (Yes, apparently that's her job -- trying to get her clients' products associated with something from the 1990s, which will presumably result in more sales.)

      But anyway, what these young people remembered most fondly was not the movies or the music, but the technology.

     "Remember flip phones?!?" my daughter's friend said, which brought on peals of laughter from the backseat. "And you know, the little antenna sticking out the top!" More raucous laughter. "And pagers!"

     "Yeah, I remember pagers," the boyfriend said, scrunching up his face as if he was summoning up some antediluvian, pre-Christian concept.

     These kids were part of the first generation to grow up with personal computers and the Internet. They recalled the days before DSL, when they had to plug the desktop computer into the phone line in order to access the Internet. They used AOL instant messaging, AIM. (Confession: I still use AIM.)

     They discussed at length how, when they wanted to talk to a friend on the phone, they'd message the friend on AIM to log off their computer to free up the line so they could call them on the phone.

     And they remembered having fun going into random chat rooms -- in the days when chat rooms were still places where innocent people could talk, before the perverts infected the system. And they laughed at the idea of going on a chat room these days. Who would do that?

     They remembered some other things, too. But I didn't catch them all. Too many of the references were unfamiliar to me (reminding me how kids live in a different world from their parents). And besides these 20-somethings -- especially the gir ... I mean, the women -- talk so fast that I often can't understand what they're saying, and they slur their words and pause and say "like" about five times a minute.

     I wonder if we were that way to our parents. Surely, we were ... remember the "generation gap"? Ah, the world moves on ...

Life Is Messy

    
     The goldenrod is yellow
     The corn is turning brown
     The trees in apple orchards
     With fruit are bending down

     So begins a poem called September by Helen Hunt Jackson, a 19th century American poet from New England, who traveled west and became an activist for Native American rights. I can just picture the used-up cornfield and the burdened trees, looking heavy and overgrown and not-at-all picturesque . . .

     . . . like my garden, by the end of the season. It no longer looks good -- choked with weeds, littered with dying stalks and leaves, trampled over by people and animals. Life is messy.

     Last night, B and I stopped off at a pizza place for a salad and a slice. Afterwards, I went to the restroom. (One needs no more proof that life is messy than a public bathroom!), and when I came out B was standing there pouting.

     "I dropped your Pepsi," she confessed.

     I had left my still-half-full, 16-oz. Pepsi bottle on the table, with the top loosely screwed on. She'd picked it up by the top to bring it with us. As she was walking through the lobby of the pizza place, the top came off. The Pepsi bottle dropped to the floor and exploded across the tile onto the front of the counter. Accidents happen; life is messy.

     My daughter came home last night. She's been spending the last three months moving to Buffalo, NY, and in the meantime she's been storing a lot of her stuff in our basement -- furniture, boxes of books, suitcases full of clothes, and bags stuffed with who knows what. And this is on top of all the piles that B and I have stored down there -- including all our sports equipment which is scattered across the floor near the door to the garage.

      I remember when I was in business school, the professors drummed into us the central assumption made by economists -- that people are rational. They are logical; they are predictable. You can put them into neat little boxes.

     On the surface, maybe it makes sense. People are more likely to buy something if it's cheaper, and they'll buy more stuff if they think they're getting it at a great price. That's how Sam's Club and Costco make their profits.

     But scratch the surface of the theory just a little bit, and you realize how preposterous it is to assume that people are rational.. A friend of mine recently revealed to me that he's paying $65,000 a year to send his son to a name brand college. The kid could get an equally good education at any number of other schools. But he wants the name brand. It has to be good; it costs $65,000!

     Another friend bought himself a $40,000 Audi last year. An Audi looks pretty cool; but he doesn't need an Audi to get himself to work. He's trying to buy himself some sex appeal. And if you knew my friend . . . it would take more than $40,000 to buy him sex appeal! Meanwhile, he's already taken it back to the shop three times for repairs.

     But people are sometimes irrational. Why do people pay $10 for a pack of cigarettes? Why do people have that third martini, when they know it will just give them a headache in the morning. Who do people tailgate on the highway at 70 m.p.h? Why does anyone get in a bar fight? Because they are rational?

     The other day I attended a 12-year commemoration of Sept. 11. The spouse of a good friend of mine was in the South Tower. This was a local ceremony, not the one in New York City, and maybe 500 people were there, remembering the 123 people from our area who'd been killed. Boy, did that mess up a lot of lives. And I don't mean to be either callous or gross, but I remember being in New York City about a week after 9/11. I remember the smoke. I remember the rubble. I remember the stench.

     Life is messy enough. Hopefully, we don't mess it up even more.