Was it just me, or did Unity really almost happen?

I'm not sure if this really happened or if it's just the rose-colored tint of nostalgia distorting my memories, but... did we almost have peace, unity, understanding and/or tolerance in the late-80's/early-90's?

I seem to remember a time, right around the time that "Kwanzaa" became a thing, where there was a huge push for everybody to celebrate (or at least acknowledge) every holiday regardless of religious affiliation. Governmental offices had a Christmas Tree AND an entire bulletin board dedicated to Hanukkah. Easter had very little to do with the commercialization of Jesus and was just a celebration of Springtime. Halloween was about costumes and the history of why we dress-up to go begging for candy. It was...

I guess I'm trying to figure out when it stopped being about all the things you CAN celebrate and started being about what you're NOT allowed to celebrate? But then I started thinking wait a minute - did we ever actually HAVE that all-inclusive celebratory era? Did that actually happen, or was that just my perception???

I remember when it all ended, even if it was just my own perspective. It was a big news item, some self-proclaimed Atheists were protesting because there was a Christmas Tree in their City Hall, which was a HUGE violation of "separation of Church and State". Having been semi-religious at the time (Catholic), I heard it repeated over and over again that these "Atheists" were actually SATANISTS bent on nothing less than THE FULL ABOLITION AND DESTRUCTION OF ALL THINGS DECENT. This was *WAR*, no doubt about it, and so The Forces Of Good HAD to fight back!

But instead of fighting back by just saying "Aww c'mon let us have our pretty little Christmas Tree", they fought back by insisting that NO ONE ELSE gets to have THEIR religious stuff up either. THIS was the big mistake! I'm sure that at least partially the intent was to just point out how ridiculous it would be to try and ban all religious observances, it became an excuse to be ever vigilant against anyone who believed something different than you. Different beliefs and observances are the *enemy*!

Did that really happen???

An Observation of The Ages Of American Humanity

As far as I have observed, this is how the Human Mind progresses for an American. YMMV.

0 - 8 YEARS - THE LEARNING AGE. Everything is new, you are just learning how to use the various tools of life - walking, eating, speaking, reading, writing - the tools you will need in order to progress in life.

8 - 15 YEARS - THE GOLDEN AGE. Now that you have the tools, you start to form preferences. The things that you discover and enjoy during this time frame are the absolute best that they will ever be (in your mind). Movies, TV, Books, Your Family, Friends, School - Stuff made before this age was okay, stuff made after this age you can see what they were trying to do, but RIGHT NOW is the summit. It was an uphill battle to get here, and it's all down hill from here. There are a few exceptions, as will be noted.

15 - 25 YEARS - AGE OF DISSOLUTION. Everything seems to start falling apart and changing rapidly. You take bigger and bolder chances all the time. You drive, you drink, you take drugs, you have sex, you get a job, you move out of your parents house. EVERY song ever written, was written about *you* and music is more meaningful now than it has ever been. You learn that all the Historical Facts you were taught in school are just lies and propaganda. You think - no, you KNOW that there's nothing more for you to learn and you have EVERYTHING figured out - and it's all crap. It's during this age that you choose two or three cherished things from your Golden Age and latch on to them, embracing everything about it from it's humble beginnings to the most current happenings. You'll acknowledge that different YEARS may have been the greatest years for those things (Comic books of the 1940's, for example), but you'll always know in your heart of hearts that your own personal Golden Age was REALLY the best time for those things.

25 - 33 YEARS - AGE OF REVOLUTION. Everyone else is WRONG, and it's YOUR JOB to tell them that they're wrong. Kids today listen to crap music, read crap books and drive crap cars. Everyone who doesn't agree with you politically, religiously and socially is obviously an IDIOT who can't understand COMMON SENSE, because you've had all this stuff figured out since The Age Of Dissolution! You can spend HOURS telling people what's wrong with them and what's wrong with the world and exactly how to fix it because you know everything!

33 - 37 YEARS - AGE OF IGNORANCE. All you know is that you know *nothing*. All these strong opinions are revealed to be just that - opinions - and you now know that EVERYONE has one. This is the age where people will ask you for your opinions the most, and all you can do is say "I don't know". You avoid conflict, just to be safe.

37 - 45 YEARS - AGE OF EPIPHANY. You have opinions, but you don't go out of your way to express them. You appreciate the opinions of everyone else, and love seeing the Age Of Dissolution people on their soap boxes preaching about things that you know they're wrong about. You begin to see the patterns in life, how everything is just a rehash of things that already happened and no one is paying attention. You have no real desire to point out the patterns, and nobody wants to hear you point them out anyways. You just go along for the ride. You look forward to the next stages of life so you can gain more knowledge.

45 - 55 YEARS - AGE OF IRRELEVANCE. The saddest age, but also the most content. Nobody cares about your opinions any more, including you. You're set in your life, this is what you do and this is who you are. TV shows, music and movies are no longer about you, nobody is targeting your demographic. You just get to *be*. Younger people will be SHOCKED when they discover that you had all the previous Ages - You liked MUSIC? You had EXPERIENCES??? YOu expressed OPINIONS?!?!?

55 - 70 YEARS - AGE OF WISDOM. The earlier ages come to you for your knowledge in hopes that your experience will give them insight, and it does. You are somewhat like a GOD.

70+ YEARS - AGE OF SOLITUDE. You now have all the answers, but no one wants to hear them from you because it's so hard to put them in to words fast enough for the younger Ages to understand. They think that you're rambling, but really you're just trying to impart the proper emotions through anecdotal experiences. The only ones you really have a chance of communicating with are the children in their Age Of Learning.

Bolstering My Suspension

Molly's current Cinematic Obsession is "Hotel Transylvania". It's not as horrible as I had expected an Adam Sandler Kids Film would be. Dracula as a single Dad, raising a teenage vampire girl, running a hotel for Monsters. It's funny, it's sweet, it's remarkably non-insulting... but I have a problem with it.

The story implies that Dracula had a baby with a Vampire Lady who was then killed by a mob of Angry Villagers. Dracula then raised the Vampire Baby, from INFANCY (complete with adorable baby, toddler and little-kid vampire grow-up montage back story bits where she first learns to turn in to a bat, learns to climb walls, etc) to the ripe old age of one-hundred-eighteen years old, where she is finally old enough to leave the Castle/Hotel.

She LOOKS 18 years old.

Accepted Vampire mythology states two things that make this an impossibility. FIRST, Vampires can't make babies and SECOND, you "freeze" looking whatever you age you were when you were first turned in to a vampire.

I am willing to suspend my disbelief, but this chronal irregularity MUST be solved first!

If her aging is just decelerated so that she doesn't look 18 till she's 118, that means that Vampires are developmentally challenged. What regular humans would have been around for 40 years and still talk like a toddler?

If she aged at normal speed and then "froze" at 18, then she's been hanging around the castle/hotel for A HUNDRED YEARS with all these teenage emotions and longings bottling up, with no reasoning behind her getting to leave at age 118.

SO HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!?!?!