Thursday, April 22, 2010

Our Victorian preoccupation

I haven't seen many wristwatches lately, though I think Republicans wear them. In DC at least, Cell phones have become pocket watches, and their plastic and silicon are checked and stroked with as much finesse and care as an engraved gilded heirloom.

I see their ancestors on Antiques Roadshow and I consider gentlemen talking into them with proper diction and great purpose on Lafayette Square. Squirrels were introduced recently to delight and entertain them, but there is urgent business to attend to all alone talking into a gold fronticepiece! It would be ridiculous if it weren't true. They're all mad, mad I say!

Unfortunately though the gesture of time checking on an elegant gadget has returned, the manners that went with the age have disappeared. I've left home, left my baby and on this train have just blown my nose into one of her socks- perhaps there are some people who would still offer handkerchiefs to ladies, if there were still ladies to receive them. I glance around and of course everyone is so absorbed in their pocket watches, no one is appalled at me for soiling a baby sock. Maybe they wouldn't notice a breast pump. Now there's a preoccupation.


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