My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
We discussed how the poem used to be read as a poem about love in a father-son relationship, but today, the first thing people think of when they read this poem is an abusive father-son relationship. As we discussed this, I started to think, why has this perception changed so much? Has the US really become a more dangerous place, or is it just that we perceive the dangers differently?
On one hand, the advances in technology has made people's lives more accessible. It is easy for a person to get information about someone else, track locations, etc. But on the other hand, technology also increases safety. Now that people have cell phones, it is easier to call 911 from any location, and a lot faster to get ahold of people in times of need. On this one I'm pretty split, but my gut instinct is that as dangers emerge, disappear and evolve as time goes on, so do our perceptions of danger. The US has not become a more dangerous place, just dangerous in different aspects. We just perceive out dangers differently.
I believe technology is a big aspect of how danger has evolved in our country. The privacy of today is in no way the privacy of yesterday, because everyone knows what everyone else is doing all the time. It has allowed for people to see what terrible things can go on behind closed doors (such as child abuse) and has brought the issue to light. It has caused us only to become more paranoid about danger and to percieve these dangers differently than before. For example, underage drinking has been occuring for a while, or at least since our parents were teenagers. Yes the national drinking age was lower then, but there also weren't the mass amount of lawsuits and liability issues that occur today when something terrible happens from a case of underage drinking. This is just one example, but people just percieve dangers that have been around for a while now differently. Great post :)
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