Why Did We Have To Change The Rules Of The Game?

[phantasm]

So much has changed,

It's all changed so quickly.

They say "Life is change."

Whose change? Whose life?

I was taught to be a... certain way by my parents.

Insofar as it was a functional way to be in the world,

it could've worked.... if I had a chance under those rules of the game....

But now everything is different, it seems.

Somehow the rules are different now.

Some people's lives got set up under the old rules, and yet don't suffer.

But anyone trying to make a change in their lives now is getting tortured.

Would you change the rules of Monopoly after two dozen times around Go?

The people who benefit under the new rules gave no thought or any flash in the brain-pan

about the people who might not thrive under the new rules, or god forbid, get trampled.

There used to be mom-and-pop stores everywhere.

Then someone said, "Egad! You know what the world needs? Shopping malls!"

The shopping malls dealt a death-blow to the mom-and-pops.

Then, Jeff Bezos came along and conceived of Amazon.com. The Waltons created Wal-Mart.

Now the world of commerce is more shaky than ever. More and more cash is flowing to fewer and fewer people.

The world is being turned upside down with increasing rapidity.

Most people just want stable, simple lives.

But no, someone somewhere decided to change the rules of the game without considering how others might be hurt.

Why did we have to change the rules of the game?

And how do we re-write the rules to benefit just about everybody?

[anirbas]

Poignant and universal. Those of us forty-ish and above, do remember when things were different. Parts of that past, weren't exactly great.
However, parts of that past were. This piece evokes those parts that were. I can remember in the Sixties and Seventies, many of the older
folks on both sides of my family had mom and pop stores, or mom and pop mechanic shops. In the case of the stores, many times the front of the
home they lived in was the store.

Excellent write, dear old friend, Phantasm.

[phantasm]

I was bingeing on Season 3 of Stranger Things a few days before I wrote this. No spoilers, I promise.

Early on in the first couple of eps, they're establishing the ambiance of the '80s. Especially with Star Court Mall. I was struck at how they depicted the consequences of building the mall. How it was driving mom-and-pops out of business. I remember almost nothing about the culture of commerce in the 80s. The only mom-and-pop I remember existing was a place called Hanibal's. I think that was their name........................ What I remember was dark red siding and black lettering on the side. It was a hardware store. Dad would drop by anytime he needed a bunch of screws or washers or something. Which wasn't often.

To the best of my knowledge, that's the only mom-and-pop we "regularly" shopped at.

What I absolutely, totally remember was shopping at the Galleria mall. Me and my friends back then must've been the youngest people to remember shopping there. I don't have a firm memory of when it was first built. I do, however, remember Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade. Thereabouts.

What seems to be the situation is that the mall was getting built and the teenagers started saying something along the lines of, "We need the Galleria like we need Gonorrhea." Well, we kids didn't know what that disease was, so we substituted it for 'diarrhea.' I just barely remember hearing kids on the playground saying something along those lines.

I for one loved trips to the mall. Especially the arcade. The sound of a quarter dropping into a bucket full of coins brings pleasure to my ears.

I wonder if a world of mom-and-pops was a better world, sometimes, now that I'm an adult. It sounds like a system that's more human, more humane.

[darkness0within]

Change is the inevitability of life. Nothing stays the same forever, as much as we would like it to sometimes.

Children grow up only knowing what is, not what was. To most of them it is just a dusty history they are not part of. They do not have the understanding of the emotion of that time in the past.

Thought provoking and well written write Phantasm.