Culture Shock

I had a dose of liberal education last night and I didn’t like it! Is this the end of the world – the last scene in this play of life? Do tell.

Have you ever stepped into an unknown world, where the culture knocks you and bumps you like a bull in a china shop, and you feel lost, battered, bewildered, small, and unknowing?

I ventured into the world of http://myspace.com/ for the first time last night, and let me tell you – I felt like my great grandmother would have felt if I had tried to explain to her what the internet was. My foray into MySpace was like taking my kids to Chuck E. Cheese, a cacophony of loud noises, intense graphics, personal pictures, personality profiles, and raunchy posts. OK, Chuck E. is not really raunchy, but I still can’t stand that mouse! This rub with a new culture, for me, was like going through a corn maze at Halloween while on an acid trip or sitting through the climax of an opera performance with shrill violins calling me to leave that damn theatre.

I was simply over stimulated, and I felt like shutting down. Maybe, like Shakespeare described, I have reached my exit, the seventh age – “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.” My senses couldn’t take it. Now, Shakespeare - why, that is music to my ears!

All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.
Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.
And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

My students and potential "friends" on MySpace might disagree and be culturally shocked by Shakespeare, instead.