October 22, 2016 - "Oops, is it my age or my education showing?"

          A new hire arrived the other day at work and she was bubbly and not-so-young and wanted to get to know me.  She was looking for common ground and we eventually got down to what I thought was common territory – our pets.

          I said, “I have a cat and dog, Jasmine and Jack.   Jasmine is a calico cat and my precious kitty angel and Jack is a wire terrier mixed with a Jack Russell and possibly something else.  Jack is a handful; cuteness is his most redeeming quality.”

          “Oh, I have a calico named Zelda.” She answered.

          “Zelda? Are you a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald?”  I asked.

          “Who?” she replied.

          Thinking she had not heard me I enlarged my question, “F. Scott Fitzgerald.  He frequented the artist’s enclaves in this area . . .”

My conversation died right there as I saw the doe’s-eyes-in-the-headlights stare.

          Another close-by employee broke up in laughter at my naiveté.

          I tried again, “Zelda, such an unusual name.  I’ve only heard it once before; how did you pick that name?”

          “It’s from the video game,” the new person answered.

          Now I was dumbfounded and silenced.  I thought, ‘Video game?’ Mmm. . . . not the correlation of The Great Gatsby and how Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, was similar to one of the main characters, Daisy?’

          I had been exposed to F. Scott Fitzgerald in high school and then many, many years later I was exposed to F. Scott Fitzgerald in college.  I do realize that not everyone goes to college and I usually don’t faux pas my way into expecting everyone can relate to things that pop up in the college realm of learning, but, a video game?   That certainly was an unexpected “gotcha – faux pas” on my part.  [There has got to be a new phrase for that and I will have to figure out what to call it because I will probably be using it in the future and often.]

          So, after a few days I had a chance to re-educate myself.  I hit the keyboard connected to my computer and the internet and by gosh and golly, there is a “Legend of Zelda” video game developed in the mid 1980s.  Well, that was after high school, but before my college days so, I totally missed that ‘fervor’ over a video game.  What else have I missed?  [Probably countless things.]

          For someone who is supposed to now be able to use the tag name “wisdom keeper” as a synonym for my age group, I was shot down in a blazing crash and burn in one quick salvo by a person who is in my opinion in their “middle age”.   Now, I have an absolute fear of trying to actually carry on a conversation with a millennial.  If I am so far mentally removed from someone in their middle age, a millennial will consider me an extraterrestrial creature or maybe even a dinosaur.  

What could be worse?  A dinosaur is a person who is outdated or has become obsolete because of failure to adapt to changing circumstances, rather than an extraterrestrial that is coming from outside the planet Earth.

Oh my GOD – I still use a flip phone – not a smart phone [because it is cheaper] . . . does that automatically makes me a dinosaur?

However, a few days later I overhear a snippet of conversation coming from two men reviewing the various paintings in the main hall of a local landmark building.

One man mentions to the other, “If I had to put a name to that painting, I’d say it was Zelda; that is how I imagine her to look . . .”

His companion answers, “. . . they say F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed at the Esmeralda Inn nearby . . . .”