Acclimated

I was thinking recently how a person's attitude or perception of things changes with the number of times they experience them.  When something is "new" to you, you gaze at it with interest and wonder what it's doing there, what it does, how much it cost, or any number of things.

Think back... What ran through your mind the first time you saw a limousine up close?  If you're like me, it was something along the lines of, "Whoa, look how long that thing is!  I wonder who's inside?  A movie star?  The President?  I wish I could see inside.  I wish I was famous so I could ride in a limo."  Now they're everywhere.  Hardly anybody gives a limo a second glance any longer.  They're most closely associated with high school proms now.  Big deal.  To me they actually look or seem a little cheesy.

What about the first time you were walking through a parking lot and heard a car alarm go off?  Didn't you stop, look around to locate the source of the alarm, then look around to see what--if anything--anyone was doing about the potential breach of security that was taking place?  If you did see anyone, chances are they were doing and thinking the same thing.  You could have everyone in the parking lot looking at each other, wondering why somebody wasn't reporting the event.  Now if an alarm goes off, you wince and wish to yourself that they would have never been invented.

Similarly, the first time I ever experienced the 'thud... thud-thud.. ' of a car with sub-woofers I couldn't believe what I was experiencing.  I was a delivery driver back then, sitting up high in my Volvo delivery truck at a stop light in north Seattle.  The noise slowly swelled and got louder, louder, and louder.  All the time I was looking around, trying to locate the source of the sound, not even really knowing what the sound even was at that point.  (As most people know, bass is non-directional, so it's real hard to pinpoint its origin in any circumstance.)  Anyway, imagine my surprise when a late-sixties Chevy Camaro pulled up alongside me and I could see down into his car at where the back seat used to be--and I found myself looking at the biggest pair of speakers I had ever seen!  The two of them took up the entire space where the back seat had been.  Now what do we think?  If you're like me, you probably wish you could use a 12-gauge shotgun like Arnold does in Terminator 2.  Lucky for us, that phenomenon has faded.

Remember the first time you saw someone talking to themselves?  The hands-free cellphone devices are very popular (if not necessary now) but I still haven't quite gotten over how weird it seems when I see someone going by me on the road, having an animated (you know how people are--they talk with their hands a lot) conversation with someone with no phone or other person in sight.    It happens a lot in stores and stuff too.  It just sounds weird to hear someone having a loud conversation with someone somewhere when you can only hear half of it.  It's doubly weird when it happens in a bathroom somewhere.  For the most part though, we've gotten used to it.

Tattoos used to be something you only saw on guy that spent time in the military.  Arms would be decorated with gaudy depictions of anchors, girls, flags, and such.  Not now.  They're everywhere these days, and the art they choose knows no boundaries.  Anyone you see walking down the street probably has one or more tattoos somewhere on their body.  What do we think when we see them now?  Nothing.  No matter who's wearing them, they're commonplace.

Yep, no matter what it is, we eventually grow accustomed, jaded, apathetic... Whatever.

Probably much like my blogs.