The New Normal

“If you want to make enemies, try to change things.” President Woodrow Wilson

We were dead asleep. The early morning silence exploded by the piercing bark of our dog, Mac. A limp arm fell with a thud on my chest, and a sleepy voice said, “Your time.” Mac barked again. The clock read 5:44. We lay there, pretending to sleep, each waiting for the other to capitulate. More barking. My time. I rolled out and dealt with it.

It’s another “new normal” day for a dog unaccustomed to daylight savings time. But since he’s always hungry, I do the easy thing … feed him. He shuts up. “Old normal” returns.

Words and phrases, like voguish food, appear on the scene and generate a great deal of attention. Like supernovas, they streak through the celestial heavens of TV, movies or publications. Some burn out from overuse and fade into the dark oblivion of history. Much like celebrities, politicians and women’s clothes. They provide considerable interest as they make the circuit but lose their potency when they become haggard idioms. Remember “cool, groovy, ubiquitous, far-out, what-would-Jesus-do and right-on?” Check the dust bin of history.

Besides “New Normal,” other words, whose shelf-lives are close to expiring, are “toxic, snarky, bailout, derivatives, too big to fail, credit-default swaps and cougars,” to name a few. Reg recently lobbed a rigid up-and-comer: “sclerotic.” And the word “transparency”… a nasty little lie.

“New normal” gets traction by describing the adjustments Americans are making to cope in the recent Great Recession. Seismic events always shake the status quo. Something new emerges. The “old” is replaced by a new set of realities. Maybe the falling axe is a kinder way of forcing change than attrition’s steady drip, drip, drip. Whichever. Still we cling to the old, the tried, and the predictable, leaning on weak reeds.

Mac now lies at my feet…a full belly, soft carpet, life is normal again for him. The old continues to clutter our lives like dead leaves from the orange trees, slain by the recent brutal artic chill. We wait for another shoe to drop, even as we move on like zombies into another day of the “new normal.” We have no choice.

Hunger energizes me also. I wandered into Larry’s Subs, sat down with Dennis, my chief mechanic. He’s reading an automotive magazine and proceeds to tell me about how car computers have revolutionized the business. “Did you know,” he exclaimed,” that all of a BMW’s functions are computerized and can be downloaded into its key?” I answer, “Far out, dude, what does this mean?” He replies, “The shade-tree mechanics are toast, it’s the new normal.”

Afterwards, I visit the bank. Ann, my friend and peer, sits at a desk, surrounded by volumes of files and paper. “What’s all this?” I ask. “Dead dreams, pal, foreclosed properties, the end of an era for many.” We lament for these, the Lost. At our ages we’re also on the trailing edge an era. We’d both rather be somewhere else, doing something other. She tells me I’ve encouraged her to write memoirs. I ask to see some. “Later,” she says, “when my secrets won’t destroy me.”

She passes me off to Jeff, 41 years old, the bank’s “tough guy.” We dance around the issue of pricing for these “failed assets.” I lose, change the subject, ask him what he does daily. “We don’t lend, we’re debt collectors. It’s the new normal,” he says.

I headed across the causeway, stunned by the news of the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti. Whatever “old normal” that country once had has disappeared in a few short minutes. I wonder what the “new normal” will be for the people of that ravaged island. The sun sinks orange into the western marshes of Glynn. I’m thankful that some of the “old normal” abides.

After dinner we watch the bombshell drop in Massachusetts as Scott Brown ends the Kennedy dynasty in the U.S. Senate. He accepts the victory with a promise of a new change, one dictated by fiscal restraint and common sense. Wow! A politician promising the possibility of a “new normal.” We’re encouraged.

It’s bed time. I pick Mac up, place him in his bed. He sleeps, everything’s normal. I want to make sense of this “new normal,” so I exhume a Latin phrase, “solvitur ambulando,” the walking solution…the thing will work itself out as we move on. I sleep with it.

Humans can adjust to anything, in time. Our household’s returning to the basics, and it feels good! I just might get used to this “new normal”... until Mac barks again! What’s new around your place?

Bud Hearn
January 28, 2010