Never change, and take it easy on the guys.

This is the kind of advice we put on our photos when we don't know any better.

Image © Julie R. Neidlinger. All rights reserved.

The back of most of the high school senior photos, which we used like trading cards, apparently had all the life knowledge we’d gained in 12 years of schooling that we thought we’d need for the next 70 years:

Never change, and take it easy on the guys.

This is what the girls wrote on each other’s photos, mind you. I don’t know what the guys wrote, if anything. Maybe a dissertation on fart spray and Doritos, two things that smell remarkably the same and, as I noted on a YouTube video in which a man discussed how women authors write their men characters so wrong partly because they describe them as smelling like cedar and sandalwood and manliness, could be used as a descriptive in some instances:

"He smelled faintly of Doritos and farts as he walked down the hallway."

I used to drive teenagers around for church youth group activities. That's the smell education I picked up on, hence my "no Doritos in the van when I'm the driver" rule because Doritos smell like vomit, and no amount of Axe covers it.

I also attempted a 10 percent candy tithe as the youth van driver, but those kids made such poor candy choices—nerds, gummies, what?—I just gave up. Anyway, I’m getting off track.

I’m still not sure why I should take it easy on the guys. Nevertheless, that overall photo-back advice has proved to be incredibly useless, mostly due to the admonition to “never change.”

Here’s a list of things that should never be categorized in the “never change” column:

• A baby’s diaper.

• The oil in your car (though just last week I saw a teenage boy driving around town fast in a massive cloud of smoke, intent on burning out his engine).

• The head of your electric toothbrush.

• Underwear.

• Filters.

You get the idea. Change is a must in this fallen world, where economies run on planned obsolescence built into every product.

I have changed. Hopefully, all people do, if for no other reason than to keep 50-year-old women out of the girls’ junior section in the clothing store.

The natural occurrence and need to change is one reason cancel culture is so disgusting. So you said something stupid twenty years ago (twenty days ago, or twenty minutes ago might be up for debate). Having disavowed earlier opinions means you’re growing and not sitting in a dirty intellectual or emotional diaper.

But, being fully aware of the reality of the internet, the people that use it, and the inability to allow people grace and a chance to change and live into that change, go look for loneprairie.net or julieneidlinger.com on the Internet Archive. Twenty-plus years of blogging is a long time to say things you might not mean, or would say differently. If you can believe it, I was much sharper-tongued in the early days (as well as prone to horrific adverb abuse, still hanging on in vestiges) than I am now. Even if our ideas don’t completely changed, the way we discuss or respond to them will as we get older.

Generally.

I mean, some of those old hippies seemed to get crazier and more virulent, albeit hemmed in by joint braces, aging supplements, walkers, and podiatrist-authorized shoes (all of which I now have an interest in and have built up an Amazon wishlist accordingly). But in general, or perhaps just speaking for GenX “Whatever” folks like me, getting old is a bit gentler. “Whatever,” stretched out over time, is still more “whatever.”

Except for the pandemic. Oopsadaisy, lost it there.

But generally. If someone didn’t cut me off in traffic before I wrote. If the neighbor didn’t annoy me before I wrote. If I haven’t had too much sugar before I wrote. If I’ve avoided social media for a while before I wrote. Yes, much gentler words have flowed from my pen in recent time than in my early pre-declawed days.

Katy, a long-time blog reader and friend, once emailed me and commented that the “softer” blogging style was intriguing. That was before the pandemic, admittedly, so I don’t know how she feels now.

She’s in luck, however, because I still have a few of my high school senior photos left in the plastic box they came in from the photographer. Considering that a photograph is about the only way we can stop time, it’s fitting that we youngsters wrote “never change” on the back of them. That’s still a photo of me in the early 1990s with all the hair, unaware of the tragedy and triumph coming her way. I could write Katy some great advice on the back, now seasoned with thirty years of additional living to pull from:

Take it easy on your knees, and change in private.