In talking to a few friends around my age, the subject turned to possessions, specifically our possessions.  Having broken through the glass ceiling of seventy, you might correctly guess that a few of the items we own are rather old.  More so, some of our possessions were given to us by our parents which adds a couple of decades to the age of those items.  You might call them antiques although I prefer not to think that anything that I bought as an antique.  If what we own are antiques, one might, by extension, suggest we are antiques as well.

 

Anyway, we talked about wanting to hand many of those items down to our sons and daughters.  The problem is that many of the younger generation have no interest in owning them (yes, there are exceptions - but few).  I guess they view them as simply old dust collectors, not antiques.  There might be one or two items they can relate to, something they can fondly recall from their early years, like a blanket or sled.  But most of the stuff we own isn't wanted by most of our children.  Those who want to incorporate antiques into their decor typically head to some antique shop where the items are well over a hundred years old.  Of course, those things aren't free; they cost hundreds of dollars.

 

I think these times are proving to be a watershed in terms of family possessions.  The younger generation has become a use and toss generation wherein most all their possessions are expendable, to be replaced by the latest and greatest.  What we of the older generation own isn't old enough to be considered antique but are aged enough to be thought of as simply old and not wanted.  We who are in our sixties and seventies still have the mindset of our parents that lived though the Great Depression wherein nothing was expendable.  Hand-me-downs were welcomed.  They weren't thought of as antiques but rather just a way to save money. 

 

But times change and people change.  I guess we could sell our possessions to some antique shop.  Then our children and grandchildren would rush to buy them.  It's a strange age we live in.