I was awake this morning from 3:00 am on (not an unusual occurrence since the pandemic.) It’s at this time that personal, professional and global anxieties arrive unbidden and settle in for a few cozy hours of certain insomnia. After an hour of tossing, turning and catastrophizing, the phrase “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” jumped into my head. “What deep memory cell did that spring from?” I wondered. This morning, I googled the phrase and sure enough it was the tagline for Timex watches in the 50s and 60s. Those of you of a certain age will remember John Cameron Swayze torture testing the durability of the Timex watch. One commercial I distinctly remember was of someone diving off a huge cliff into the ocean and not breaking the watch. Sure enough, thanks to YouTube, this commercial lives on. Click here if you’d like to wander down memory lane or see how silly the old folks were.
So why did this phrase spring into my consciousness at that particular moment. It seems that now all of us are taking more of a “licking” than usual. I think this meme sums it up well.
After hearing Dr. Fauci say we may reach 100,000 Covid 19 cases a day and reading that there’s a new pig flu that could jump to humans, it’s tempting to run screaming through the streets yelling “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore,” (Another old movie reference – showing my age)
It actually helped to watch this clip from the 1975 movie, Network. We lived through 1975 and 1963, 1968, 1986, 1991, 2001. Add your own horrible years. If we can live through those times, we can live through these. We just have to “keep on ticking.” And, even if you are mad as hell, don’t despair – No matter how crazy, infuriating, conflicted, and scary things have gotten, we’ve somehow managed to get through 244 years as the United States of America.
Happy 4th of July everyone. Stay safe out there.