While I am wasting time with youtube, I often will update my various social media connections with a link to a video with a song that I am particularly struck by. A recent interaction that resulted from that caused me to think about the mid-west.

When I was growing up I was always a little bit unclear as to exactly where the mid-west started and stopped.

I knew it began somewhere to the west of the Allegheny Mountains. When I was in Cleveland, I knew I was in the mid-west. But exactly when did I leave the mid-west on the other side?

When I drove around the country with Bill Sullivan in his Mustang, and where has Bill Sullivan gone anyway, in 1975 in an effort to forget my then former college girl friend and find exciting and hopefully inappropriate adventures (sadly, none of which happened), I knew when we got to Los Angeles that we were not in the mid-west anymore but when did we cross the line from mid-west to not-mid-west? A mystery unsolved, at least by me.

By the way, Bill’s Mustang had a very high-horsepower engine, could it have been 390 (did they put that kind of engine at the time in a Mustang?). We got perhaps 9 miles per gallon of gas. On the other hand, I remember driving through Arkansas and seeing gas for 23.9 cents/gallon; which actually says more about the lack of inappropriate adventures that happened than it does about gas prices in 1975.

In Phoenix, Bill and I went to a pretty nice French restaurant. When Bill’s steak came, he caused the waiter to become extremely pale when he asked for ketchup to put on the steak. I guess we were not very sophisticated traveler’s.

Other than how big and beautiful and varied the United States is, which you really cannot appreciate without traveling around it on the ground, the other strong memory from that trip was how we fought over what was to play on the radio. That issue became more and more important as the ultimately two-month long drive came to a close. I had to leave it in Minneapolis since I had to report to basic training for the Army Reserves July 6th (only remembered because of that date’s proximity to my birthday). But, as we say, that is another story altogether.

Well, actually I misspoke above, I actually thought about the mid-west because I reflected on whether I was in or past middle-age. I knew that I had entered middle-age at some point though once again not entirely sure when but was unclear as to the exit point. I suspect that the classical definition of the end of middle-age, assuming there IS a classical definition, may be changing as people have longer life-spans. I read somewhere that 50% of all children born in the US now will live to be 100 years old, a remarkable thing.

My question about middle-age came about after I tweeted the link to one of my favorite Danny Kaye song’s “Inchworm”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXi3bjKowJU. I got a response to that tweet from a young woman I knew who told me that she really liked the song a lot. BUT she had to look up who Danny Kaye was in Wikipedia. When I asked her if she was kidding about having to do the Wikipedia search, she pointed out that she was only three when Danny Kaye had died.

So seriously it was at that moment that I realized I had left middle-age, but when exactly did that happen?

The plane flight was uneventful, I was able to get tomorrow’s boarding pass before leaving the airport, and then went outside to catch the rental car shuttle.

After waiting for what seemed a VERY long time for the shuttle for my unnamed rental car company to come, whose name rhymed with Mudget, I arrived to get my rental car. The guy at the counter told me it was in C-8 around the building to the back, the list location near the road.

It was a new Altima. I put my suitcase in the trunk, adjusted the mirrors, adjusted the seat, and then went to put the key in the ignition.

No key.

In fact, there was no ignition. Just a button that said press to turn engine on and off. On the seat next to me was a fob.

I held the fob next to the button. Nothing.

I pushed the button and the ‘On’ light went on. Great, I thought, I’ll just push it again. The ‘On’ light went off.

I tried it again. On. Then off.

I stared at it. I opened the glove compartment for instructions. No instructions.

After trying to come up with any other way of starting the car, I got out, and walked back around the building, back to the counter, and asked how I started the car.

Obviously, the guy said, make sure the fob is with you. Press your foot on the brake and then push the button. The engine will start. Human engineering at its finest.

Somehow I felt that another gap between myself and Gen Y had opened up further, despite my continuous attempts to be relevant by being active on Twitter, Facebook, starting a blog, …