The Upside of Getting Old

A baby battery in The Matrix.

More and more I run across people of indeterminate gender. This happens most often at Whole Foods, where most of the checkout people are tattooed, purple-haired, nose-pierced sexual mysteries. I find this disturbing since I am 72 and have spent a lifetime dealing with people who could be identified as either male or female, giving me at least a tiny hint to their expected behavior. But these neither-here-nor-there folks strike me as oddities whose lack of obvious gender signals make them as inscrutable as aliens from another planet.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with being gay or straight. I have always had many homosexual friends and family members and couldn't care less about who's zooming who. But the current trend of being neither male nor female seems to be leading to a dark place, one similar to that memorable scene in The Matrix where thousands of manufactured babies sucking on tubes stretch as far as the eye can see.

Add all that to the ubiquity of Big Brother, a.k.a. anyone with a cell phone, watching every move we make and ready to report and/or record the slightest offense, and I'm happy I won't be around in 50 years. I do feel intense sadness for my son who likely will be, and for his kids who he might just purchase at a trinket shop in Fisherman's Wharf while vacationing in San Francisco. If there still is a San Francisco.