Lifestyle

My parents probably thought they had raised me better. They had tried to give me the decision-making abilities that would prevent such disgrace. For it to happen once or twice is one thing, but after too many times they knew I would get a reputation. Still, I took the Walk of Shame over and over again.

Maybe it’s going to become increasingly possible that artificial intelligence takes over the world, and by the time it happens no one will be surprised. Whatever our existence will look like in a few decades, to see it now will likely be just as shocking as the changes our grandfathers saw in their time.

I wasn’t there for the assignation of Martin Luther King, the protests against the Vietnam War, or the tragedy of the Kent State shooting. Nor would I know how the events America has experienced recently compare to those instances in history. Still, it can’t help but feel like we’re living in this generation’s dark moment.

Like in many schools, “Where the Red Fern Grows” (1961) by Wilson Rawls was required fifth-grade reading. Even though it was set more than a thousand miles away and several generations before my time, it was one of the earliest novels that I could relate to.

A lot of horror movies are set on farms. From “The Curse” (1987) to the fright-fest “Invasion of the Blood Farmers” (1972), the isolated settings associated with agriculture have provided useful grounds for such circumstances. In remote backdrops, it is supposed it’s easy for the depravity to go unnoticed.

I remember the first time I heard about Facebook. A girl in my college class told me that it was “kind of neat” and that I should check it out. I thought, “That’s stupid. That will never catch on.” It turns out I was wrong. Fifteen years later, Facebook is so big that it is trying to bring out its own currency.