My WTF Life

Did NOT see that coming. Or that. Or that. Or that.

Every era contains instances of WTF, i.e. “never saw that coming.”

I think of my maternal grandmother, Gammie. She was born in 1906 and died in 2000. Her life encompassed the entirety of the twentieth century, her ninety-four years spanning several eras. To my knowledge, she never uttered “WTF” exactly, but I’m sure she felt it. (Like when her teen grandson started a band with RuPaul.) In Gammie’s time, she saw: the emergence of air travel, ubiquity of telephone and radio, the phonograph, women’s suffrage, the Spanish Flu, World War I, the silent film era and the rise of “talkies,” Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, establishment of the State of Israel, Salk’s polio vaccine, television, the Korean War, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, jazz, C & W, rock and roll, “pop” culture, Jim Crow, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, multiple assassinations, Watergate/Nixon’s resignation, the Iranian/Islamic Revolution, space travel, 24-hour news, the Challenger disaster, AIDS, IVF, and the dawn of the computer age.

That’s a shortlist.

(Sobering side note: when I arrived in ‘65, Gammie was the age I am now.)

My grandmother co-raised me. We talked a lot, but as I age, I sadly realize ever more what we didn’t discuss. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to ask about the seismic changes in her time, and which ones she did and did not see coming. I’m guessing quite a lot of the above situations – especially the unprecedented ones like space travel, television, movies, and Watergate/Nixon’s resignation – caught her and her fellow citizens by surprise. I can relate.

If I am blessed with grandkids, and they inquire about the WTFs I have known, I’ll have a lot to say.

“Please tell us some WTF moments from your long and illustrious life, Gramps. The ones you did and did not see coming.”

“Well, kids, are we talking culturally or personally?”

“We’re talking culturally. Save the personal stuff for another time. We’re kids, remember.”

“Right. Well. OK, here goes: I don’t recall the Moon landing, though I was technically around for that. I was too young to appreciate the significance of Watergate when it happened – I was nine when Nixon resigned – but I can say this: I’d never seen your great-grandmother Mimi so happy, and that’s a fact.

“The next WTF moment I recall was the Iranian/Islamic Revolution in 1979. I was a high school freshman. This was pre-internet, so I was only dimly aware of how consequential it was. But I would learn.

“The 1986 Challenger disaster comes to mind. I watched it on a little black and white TV in my first New York apartment. Stunning and horrific. Did not see it coming. Astronauts had died in accidents before that, but those tragedies were never broadcast live on national television. At that same time, AIDS was ravaging my community, with no drug therapies yet, and no vaccine. Seeing deathly ill friends walking my neighborhood was common, hearing that they’d died in their prime was not unusual. It was nightmarish, and unprecedented in my life.

“The WTF moments started to come more frequently after that. When I was bartending at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in 1989, we watched astonished as German citizens defied machine gun-toting soldiers and began the process of bringing down the Berlin Wall with sledgehammers and the like. The bar owner set up a TV and adjusted the antennae so patrons and employees could watch the live coverage. The entire Soviet Union was falling. Maps would change. I’d been in what was then called West Germany just three years before, walking that wall, looking at the razor wire atop it, the armed guards in turrets above. I’d taken a train through East Germany. I couldn’t leave my rail car, and East Germans couldn’t board. The towns we passed looked frozen in the 50s, with craters left over from World War II. It all seemed like it would last indefinitely. And then, suddenly, it was over.

“The 1992 presidential election was the first time my candidate won. I’d voted Democrat in ‘84 and ‘88, and the losses were big. But in ‘92, my guy – a fellow southerner named William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton – decisively became the 42nd U.S. president. Winning felt good. Sadly, he got intimately involved with a woman 25 years his junior, got caught, and lied under oath about what they’d done. He got away with it, though. Sort of. It would haunt him and his wife, Hillary, for the rest of their lives.

“Next up was the advent of cell phones and the internet. The rise of the internet was the biggest WTF of all. Unprecedented, and, for the vast majority, unforeseen. Something to think about. I made my first call on a cell phone in 1994 – they were called ‘mobile phones’ then – from England to New York. I wouldn’t own one until your dad was ten or so. By then they were called “smartphones” and, as you know, they did a lot more than make phone calls. I’d gotten an email account when your dad was born in 1998. At thirty-two. I would be part of the last generation who’d lived a significant chunk of time before the internet existed.

“While the internet was the biggest WTF of my lifetime, 9/11 would be a close second. Your grandmother and I took turns watching from our tenement rooftop while the Twin Towers – two miles away – burned and then collapsed. When one of us watched in horror, the other would be in the apartment below looking after your dad, who was three years old and playing with blocks and Legos. We moved to the Catskills the next year.

“The arrival of YouTube and social media in the middle of that first decade of your century really changed how people communicate, and how data, and both information and misinformation, spread. Although it connected folks as never before, social media in particular was like the opening of Pandora’s Box, unleashing a lot of darkness and evil into the world.

“Those developments qualify as big WTF moments, both unforeseen. The internet and social media really helped Barack Obama get the most votes of any presidential candidate prior to 2008, a record that was broken first by Joe Biden in 2020 and then by Kamala Harris in 2024.

“The arrival of Covid in 2020 was probably the third biggest WTF of your Gramp’s lifetime. A pandemic not unprecedented in world history, and not unforeseen, but huge by any metric. It changed my life, and a lot of people’s. It killed many at first, some folks we knew. Made a lot of people really sick. Prior to 2020, it was pretty rare in the Western world to see masks. Now, not so much.”

“You were around for Trump, right?”

“Yes! You know that. You just like to hear the story. I was fifty-one when he was elected in 2016. That was a WTF moment, for sure, although when he ran, I saw his victory coming more than a lot of our friends. His win was unprecedented in that he was not a politician, for starters. Had no governing experience, had in fact declared bankruptcy several times. He was an unapologetic racist and misogynist, but he was not the first presidential candidate you could so describe. He would be convicted of sexual assault, defamation, and other felonies, and he, his associates, and some of his followers tried to overthrow the government when he lost his re-election bid in 2020. Still, a lot of his followers loved him like nothing I’ve ever seen. Some loved him because of those aforementioned qualities. But as y’all know, in world history, that kind of allegiance to a despot isn’t unprecedented. And millions of decent conservatives held their noses and voted for him twice. Of course a lot of folks on the left – like your Gramps here – loathed him, and loathe the memory of him.

“It was a scary time when he tried again in 2024. When he lost, and we got our first woman president, people worried about another civil war, which, as you know, did not happen. Still, it was a scary time.”

“We know all about scary times.”

“I know you do. But hang in there. The WTF moments can be good. Look at me. The odds were against me being here to talk to you, yet here I am.”

…to be continued