Whatever Happened To Happy?

How I remained relatively happy while others became angry

We grew up the same, so why the change?

There once was a boy named Happy.

He was perfectly content to build roads made of close pins on the carpet in the living room of his aunts house. Years later he became a city planner.

One November day, his playing was interrupted by an announcement by Walter Cronkite on tv that president Kennedy had been shot. Shortly thereafter while eating a tuna sandwich at his aunts house, he witnessed the killing of the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as he was escorted from the Dallas Texas police station. He absorbed the images but there were roads to be built and homework to be completed.

Years passed playing army in the woods building foxholes and battling imaginary enemies ranging from the Nazis to the Viet Cong. His parents were not so happy since race riots erupted during the summer of 1968 and the draft was fast approaching for Happy to fight in Vietnam for real. Along came Nixon with his Law & Order and an end to the draft and everybody was happy again, at least for a while.

And then there were the lies. 

Nixon with Watergate, Clinton with Monica, Reagan with the Iran-Contra arms deal, Bernie Madoff scam and Enron lies, Weapons of Mass Destruction WMDs never found in Iraq, real estate appraisal lies bursting the bubble and crashing the economy. Happy had every reason to be skeptical of big business and big government. 

But still Happy remained happy keeping busy with work and getting on with life.

Family and friends have come and gone. And there will be others who come and go.

Yet Happy has remained relatively happy.

So what gives with his boomer counterparts and their sadness and anger? 

They have experienced similar ups and downs. Tragedies and triumphs. Laughs and tears. 

Were they always sad and angry and Happy just didn’t notice? 

Was he too busy to notice? 

What happened in their lives to make them so sad, so angry, so vengefull.

Happy worked 2 and 3 jobs at a time and never made much money. But he remainded relatively happy. His boomer friends and the acquaintances he made during the course of his life made more money and yet seemed increasingly sad and angry. What gives?

Why do they live life looking through the rear-view mirror while Happy looks through the windshield?

Happys blissful childhood happiness has been replaced by cautious happiness and a tempered optimism that he wishes his childhood friends and fellow boomers would share.