Oh lord, I am thoroughly Gen Y! Apart from my
all-encompassing LOVE of all things Real Housewives and Dr Phil and the fact
that I always have at least three devices running, I’d have to say my worst generation Y trait is my constant
need to find the quickest way to do something.
It started out innocently, probably about three or four
years ago, when I began saying ‘LOL’. I swear
I meant it in an ironic way (I know, that’s what they all say), it was mocking
– witty even. But you know how these things are, it all starts as a joke and before you know it you’re watching Everybody
Loves Raymond, he calls Deborah “smelly tramp” and you look at the person
you’re with and exclaim “OMG LOL!” And actually mean it. Oh, dear.
So now, logically, I am going to discuss my love of audio
books.
I thought I was a genius when I downloaded Tina Fey’s book
‘Bossy Pants’ and put it onto my iPhone. I listened to it every day on the way
to work, had a good chuckle and then told everyone that I had read it. I’m
still unsure whether or not this is a lie, although given my history (see here
and here) I’m going to go ahead and say that it is probably some sort of
untruth. Anyway, on the back of my
one-whole-book-read-in-a-single-week-while-driving, I thought “let’s branch out
and try some serious literature”. So I went ahead and downloaded all thirty of
the little six minute chapters of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country For Old Men’. I
love violence and I love good prose, so this book had been on my list for ages.
And so began the most confusing few days of driving to work I have ever
experienced.
I need to preface this anecdote with the fact that at this
point in my life I was leaving home at 5.09am to drive 25 kilometres from my house
in the inner city to Sydney’s north shore. This was a dark and quiet drive to
work which could sometimes be a little strange. Once I got literally every one
of the red lights between my house and Hunters Hill (probably about thirty sets
in all) and was punching my steering wheel in fury when I arrived at one of
those sets of lights which can only be triggered by someone pressing the cross
walk button. Of course the lights went red, and as I looked around for a
culprit whom I could silently hate for the rest of my drive to work, a fox
walked across the road. How he pressed the button I never found out, but it was
a weird moment in my life none the less. Anyway, I digress.
It was on this long and quiet drive to work that I began to
listen to McCarthy’s tale of Llewelyn and his accidental involvement in an
illicit drug deal gone wrong. The setting and people were painted beautifully
in my mind, but I couldn’t get past how little regard McCarthy had for an even remotely linear story line. Just when I
would start to understand what was happening, the whole story would be shaken
up and I would be utterly lost again. One moment a character would be dead, the
next he was walking and talking, he’d be crossing a plane and suddenly he was
in a motel. After five days of listening to this almost nonsensical story as I
drove through the silent streets of Sydney (which were thankfully sans-fox) I
started to wonder if I was going mad. Why couldn’t I understand this acclaimed
novel? Had I lost my smarts? Had I sustained some sort of head injury? NONE of
the reviews spoke of difficulty simply understanding the transition between
scenes and situations. Finally the novel came to an end. I picked up my phone
(slightly relieved at the silence) and went to play a song. It was then that I
realised my iPhone had been set to
SHUFFLE the whole time.
So now I’m back to reading books like a normal person – with
my eyes. Yep, totes a Gen Y epic fail. LOL.
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