Who's rich, dead or in jail?

DENVER AIRPORT — Last month, I googled a few of my high school classmates — people I knew long before the invention of googling, and for that matter before the Internet or triple-bladed razors.
I would have googled more of them, but I could recall only about a dozen names, and half of those turn out to have been characters in sketches by the original cast of “Saturday Night Live.”
But what can you expect? Guys at my advanced age deserve credit if we remember to shave at all.
For this weekend I will attend our 25-year class reunion, assuming I remembered the correct graduation year. Anyway, I got an invitation, which left me no way to deny that I am now, as who should say, something more than 30 years old.
At least I won’t have to endure childish comparisons of success and be humiliated by some former nerd we called “Weasel” who arrives in a chauffeur-driven limo with its own Starbuck’s. That’s because I went to a little school in a remote corner of Michigan from which students disperse to the four winds immediately after graduation to advance forward into the future that’s ahead of them. I expect little competition for hors d’oeuvres at the reception.
So now those futures are behind us. We can look back at living through an era of new technological wonders from touchtone phones to curved toothbrushes that overshadow even Gilette’s multi-bladed marvels.
OK, this whole reunion trip is mostly an excuse to go someplace where “spring” does not mean highs in the mid-30s with rain turning to snow toward evening, and where I can rent a sailboat without worrying where to stow a survival suit.
But I do look forward to the classroom visit part of the reunion festivities, when the school’s current students get to meet us oldtimers. I’ve put some work into the sage advice I assume they’re eager to hear and certain to follow. Although, I understand advice is now called “talking points” and high schoolers won’t notice them unless they come texted on a cell phone.
I will warn them to stay away from the two most pernicious temptations facing today’s youth: drugs and college, only one of which I was smart enough to avoid.
Maybe the students won’t care, and I sure don’t recollect what the visiting alumni told me a quarter century ago. Those crazy geezers were old, gray, out of touch, and probably still used straight toothbrushes.
This year’s graduates have never known a world without a weak dollar, and likely will think nothing of shaving with a quintuple-bladed razors. Thanks to gene replacement rejuvenation therapy, they won’t even be old and gray for their 25-year reunions.
But I bet their children will make fun of them for lugging around those clunky MP50 players instead of just downloading everything onto their brain implants.
Drew Herman is the Kodiak Daily Mirror assistant editor. Read past “Out of the Loop” columns at www.sputvalvo.blogspot.com.

After long enough, any career can smell rank

Who would have thought that little Davy Petreaus of Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., would grow up to command the U.S. central command, and after only 34 years in the Army?
Hasn’t he ever heard of lateral mobility? Who stays in the same company that long anymore? Was it the medals, the titles, the free chipped beef?
If only the private sector —where five years in the same job now counts as a career-killing rut — could tap the military mystique. After almost five years, I am among the oldtimers at this newspaper, but do I get my own driver? (For the answer, shift the following letters one alphabet place to the right: mn.)
Maybe employees would stick around longer if they could look forward to becoming reception desk commander or colonel of custodial services. Think of poor Lt. Wombat, still waiting for promotion 24 years after Capt. Kangaroo retired. And I don’t even want to get into the ugliness between sergeants Iowa and New Mexico since Captain America died.
It could be worse. George Washington, after making it to commanding general of the United States Army in 1799, wasn’t promoted to general of the Armies of the United States until 1976.
Even without uniforms and salutes in every workplace, title inflation has a firm hold these days, as we were just reminded by National Administrative Specialists Week. Woe betide anybody looking for work as a mere secretary when other resumes sport that job description.
Is this part of the same trend that turned my grade school history class into social studies? When I was growing up, Gilette made razors; now they only offer shaving systems. Then again, maybe it’s because of the advent of disposable razors and the complications they cause that the garbage man of my youth has been replaced by our modern sanitary engineer.
Of course, there are also problems with the title rewards system, as the United Federation of Planets knows only too well. As I enjoyed watching “Star Trek” TV shows and movies over the decades, it got more and more interesting to see how the writers explain either a) the same ship with an entire crew of officers whose ranks entitle them to command their own ships, or 2) crewmembers serving onboard the same ship for 30 years without getting above lieutenant. Personally, I would find the cumbersome admiral’s braids a little annoying while washing dishes.
Mirror assistant editor Drew Herman is commodore of a fleet of two kayaks.