The same old thing has changed

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

- Harry E. Fosdick

My son's weekend athletic endeavors were over, and I was checking the out-of-town locker room one last time before we left.

Things were pretty clean considering more than a dozen 11- to 14-year-old boys had just hauled themselves and all their equipment out of a room the size of backyard utility shed.

In fact the only thing I found, hanging on a hook in the back corner, was a reasonably clean black T-shirt.

It featured the logo of that early '70s rock band Led Zeppelin.

"Things really haven't changed that much," I thought to myself. "Kids today are listening to the same music I listened to a generation ago."

I then proceeded to get into a car with my family and drive 300-plus miles back home, most of it with the vehicle on cruise control.

A display panel on the dashboard told me the temperature outside and how many more miles I could drive at the current speed without needing to stop for fuel.

While in the car on the way back, my wife talked to other family members on a cell phone. She made plans for future weekends.

In the back seat, my son made up for a weekend in a distant town by finishing a school report on a laptop computer. Every now and then he would ask about word usage, but after a while he figured out the computer's spell-check function seemed a bit more reliable than his parents' suggestions.

He was rewarded with an occasional break and would whip out a small computer device, the size of a lengthwise wallet, upon which he played video games and could even watch a new release movie.

In a car.

Traveling 70-plus mph down an interstate.

You know, most of the time I don't think anything has changed, and sometimes it seems like everything has.

TODAY'S JOKE: A little boy was attending his first wedding.

After the service, his cousin asked him, "How many women can a man marry?"

"Sixteen," the boy said.

His cousin was amazed that he had an answer so quickly and asked, "How do you know that?"

"Well," the boy said, "all you have to do is add it up. Like the preacher said, '4 better, 4 worse, 4 richer, 4 poorer.'"

Reach Bill Kirby at (706) 823-3344 or bill.kirby@augustachronicle.com.