Old vs. Young: Tuesdays With Keenan

by Elizabeth Keenan

“Come away from the computer and take those ear things off, I want to show you something.”

I pull myself away from the MySpace page and pause my iPod reluctantly. She’s holding a square controller that’s plugged into an antique Nintendo box. The screen is pixilated beyond comprehension. “This,” she says proudly, “is the Legend of Zelda. Play with me”

At least she isn’t making me watch old music videos on VHS.

She begins as she does every Tuesday, lamenting about “the good old days”- the nineties - when the world was a “simpler place” and “we weren’t all so caught up in the feeding frenzy of technology.”

I listen because I know she’s dying and needs these days with me to remember. Perhaps there is something to learn from her. She tells me how different my sixteen-year-old world is from the one she lived in and I listen because I know Keenan’s time is short and I should pay attention to her ramblings out of courtesy. She is old - nearly thirty - and has things she wants me to learn from her own mistakes and experiences before she withers away. 

I get comfortable on a chair and take a look around for the hundredth time. Her apartment is like the prop closet for “I Love the ‘90’s”. Posters of bands I’ve never heard with names like The Cure and Alice in Chains, and goofy looking pin-ups of someone named Luke Perry. Her closet is filled with out of style clothing like Guess jeans, Z Cavarriccis and Hypercolor shirts. Her desk is littered with a unicorn-covered trapper keeper, jelly bracelets and something called a charm necklace. All of these relics are foreign and silly to me.

Every week is a lesson in what has changed from when she was my age. Last week she game me books about the Civil War to use for my paper. I Googled all of the info in the time it took me to open one of the books. The week before, she took away my cell phone and challenged me to use a landline and pay phones for a full week. The results were disastrous. There were many other lessons, like reading an actual newspaper instead of using CNN.com and “living in reality instead of watching it on TV.”

She begins with my lesson of the week.

“In my day, we had to meet people face to face and sustain friendships with effort. You had to share things about yourself in conversation instead of on a profile page. The friends you made and kept were not tallied on a MySpace or Facebook page. And if you had a crush on someone, you’d have to call them, not text them or instant message them, and phone conversations could last for hours.”

“Why didn’t you just email, it’s so much faster?”  I ask.

“We didn’t have email. Well, some people did, but it was still new and not everyone understood what the point of it was. We wrote letters. It was a wonderful thing to get a handwritten letter from someone in the mail. It showed personality and devotion.”

I roll my eyes wanting to get back to my instant messaging, but I take the controller and struggle to understand the point of the game. She continues.

“In my teens, I thought I had everything figured out, but I was mistaken. Everything changes, which is important, but losing connection with everyone around you is the fatal flaw of all this change.”

I’ve heard this tired argument before.

“I haven’t lost connection . . . I am connected to three hundred friends online, fifty more in my cell phone and a dozen on top of that on Match.com, Nerve, and Lava Life.”

I figure I’ve made my point, but she pulls out a photo album and shows me pictures with friends. “Why are everyone’s pants rolled like that?” I ask. The hairstyles are absurd as well.

She smiles, but doesn’t indulge me.

“All people I met in person, although many I’ve lost touch with, it is the curse of time passing; people drift apart.” She shows me a picture of herself with a stupid-looking guy. “He’s the one I loved the most when I was sixteen.”

“What happened to him?”  Her sorrow is palpable, as if he was swept away at sea or killed in a war.

“I don’t know . . . we lost touch. We used to write letters, and then they stopped.”

I ask what his name is and she whispers it dramatically. I pull him up on Friendster in minutes. “Here he is. He works at Meryll Lynch. And look, he’s married and lives here.” (And he’s a major tool.)

Her mouth drops and she shakes her head. “Some things are better left unknown.” But she looks over my shoulder, trying not to act like she cares.

She pats my palm. “Human connection is more important then you’ll ever know. The world is a crazy place now, and you have to hold on to the people you care about. Tell them in person that they are important, remember birthdays. Write them letters, hug them, call them on the phone. Don’t cease to exist as an actual person because it takes too much effort to make the effort.”

I pop a Ritalin and wash it down with a Red Bull, since my attention is waning. I put the controller down and check the latest news perezhilton.com before switching over to youtube. There’s a video of a chipmunk on waterskis. Keenan looks over my shoulder and shrugs. “In my day we had home videos, in yours everybody’s home videos are audition tapes for false fame.”

I’m antsy and look at my watch. “What?” she asks.

“The series finale of ‘The OC’ is on. I need to get home.”

I explain what the show is. She nods and reaches into a box retrieving a handful of VHS tapes. She hands them to me and I see a stupid picture of smiling faces, among them Tori Spelling and some other people I vaguely recognize. “This,” she gestures excitedly, “is 90210.” She hands me another item, “Listen to this on your way home. It’s a walkman.”

“Where is the charger?”

“It uses batteries.” She’s impatient. “And the tape inside is a ‘mix-tape’ I made. It is the ultimate gesture of friendship of my time.”

“What’s on it?” I ask looking at the piece of plastic inquisitively.

“The essentials,” she says, “‘In Your Eyes’, ‘Nothing Else Matters’, ‘Patience.’”

I make a mental note to look these bands up on iTunes.

Before I leave, I give her a hug, thinking it may be the last time I see her.
“What disease do you have?” I asked tentatively.

“Nostalgia,” she explains quietly. “As the autumn of my young adulthood engulfs me, I realize how much I took for granted and how out of touch we’ve all become.” She is serious. “Never forget the importance of human contact.”

I get a little choked up in spite of myself. I pack up my laptop, cell phone, and iPod. “How much longer do you have?”

She sighs. “Well, I never said I was dying, but I could go at anytime.”

I tell her I’ll write her a letter.