Love Story

In retrospect, I’m recommending a movie that came out in 1970. I’m speaking with people born in 1990 or later, because, see, they’re less than 25 years old.

It’s thought arresting for me, that these folks, now 20-25, were just exiting the womb as I finished my twenty year military career. And the movie I’m recommending, ‘Love Story’ was released 20 years or more before they first breathed. Full disclosure: I was a ninth grader when the novel and movie exploded into my cultural sphere, entering mostly through the girls (like Melissa in Science, and Vicky and Joy, who lived up the street) in my classes in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania. For some reason, I was paying close attention to their opinions.

Gosh, darn, I’m not feeling old from this, just philosophical. I don’t think of it as proof I’m old but that I’m different from them, and born in an earlier year. I recall going through similar things with others. Those older than me were astonished I’d not heard of certain people or events. They were WWII vets who remembered hearing their grandparents’ stories about new inventions and stars of their day. Each generation has passed over this ground. We believe here and now imposes its will on all equally, that pop culture is homogenized for everyone’s intake even while we know we all have different tastes. But through repetition and mass exposure, we become conditioned to believe we’re all for one and one for all, watching DWTS, MNF, or TBBT. I remember asking a co-worker ten years older, “You haven’t heard of the song by David Bowie, ‘Fame’?” He, shaking his head, answered, “No. I don’t recognize it. Maybe I’ve heard it but I don’t know that title. I know who David Bowie is, of course, but I don’t know that song.”

He astonished me, that he didn’t know this song, which was being broadcast everywhere as part of the Top 40. Not everywhere, I know now.

Now, a few years ago, I heard joking references to this new phenomenal singer, what was his name, Justin something? Beaver? What?

(Just to clarify what I mean, because that’s how I am, I’m referring to Justin Bieber, and I enjoy his song, ‘Love Yourself’, learning of it through the car FM, enjoying the lyrics and mellow melody before discovering it was him.)

So, it isn’t surprising that I’m asking them, “You’ve never seen ‘Love Story?’ Based on the Erich Segal novel, with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw?” (And it’s striking to me that I remember those details so vividly, when, while watching ‘All the Way’ on HBO the other night, I was asking myself, “Who is that actor? Where do I know him from?”)

And it’s not surprising that they’re shaking their head and replying, “No, no, who? Who?”

No, it isn’t surprising. And in twenty years, they’ll probably be asking someone something of the same thing that I asked them, as others asked me, inserting the event, movie, person, whatever.

Of course it won’t be the same as me asking them, or the older people asking me. After all, neither of them had the great rock music, television shows, movies, books and actors that I had when I was growing up.

Things were a lot better…then.