Stress reliever

[eyesup]

. . . if you're far enough from town and highway not to hear those sounds. Only the sounds are different, usually of bird calls.

Farmers in particular should be more in tune with nature, you would expect.

The 1st time I took my wife to East Texas, she was unnerved by all the animal and insect sounds. Especially after dark when they all started calling back and forth. Said she couldn’t sleep. Crickets, cicadas, frogs, owls and all manner of other critters out scurrying around huntin’ for food or a little whoopee. Drove her nuts.

She asked me how we managed to sleep with all that racket, and I said “What racket?” For me it was all background noise. It depends on what you are accustomed to. I was keenly aware of the lack of that comforting background when I 1st went camping out in the desert.

The desert makes noise it’s just not very loud. Not as much competition.

Duane

[Greenbare Woods]

. . . if you're far enough from town and highway not to hear those sounds. Only the sounds are different, usually of bird calls.

Farmers in particular should be more in tune with nature, you would expect.

Most farmers I've known spend more time fighting against nature than being part of nature.  Farmers tend to worry about nature, too much rain, too little rain, too much wind, etc.   One time I met a couple of nudist farmers who always drove tractor naked, but I don't think that's common even out where nobody else is around.   One would think that farmers ought to be naturists blending with nature, but that doesn't seem to be my experience.

Bob

[BlueTrain]

That's because farming isn't natural and nature isn't friendly. We can't all be hunter-gatherers. But farming is the most basic thing to meet human needs.

[jbeegoode]

Yea, the factory farms were uptight. I started going free range naturism with my friends, pals and with my girlfriends.

AND yes, there was quite a bit of sexual experimentation in the mix. I began to read the articles in Playboy, too, but still the stereotypes generated in the pictures had an affect upon what I saw as attractive and the preference of a hot young thing.
I was in my mid-40's before I went to bed with the first woman over thirty. Slow learner, mellowing with age, or something washed out the fixation.
Jbee

I was the same way preferences wise until a few years ago. And then I just started seeking different things. I think that's normal, right?

Yep, I think so, too. We all have influences creating a zillion different preferences. I did a great deal of experimenting and exploring girlfriends with different body types mostly during the 1970's when I was twenties, but much started with that Playboy ideal. I acquired different personal preferences in concern with body type and that would change. I'd look for attractive and then see if she was personable, commonality changes.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that if you focus on the positives, people become more attractive, if you focus on negatives they wilt. This has given me a broader spectrum of choice and actually more open to women when I realized that I really don't know what is best for me. Preferences change, people change.

This morning I made love to the most beautiful wonderful woman/goddess in the whole of the universe and beyond...at least as my current personal preference and perspectives sat at that moment. She was older than 30.
Jbee

[JOhnGw]

Which reminds me that I again woke up with the most beautiful woman  in the world. It doesn't get boring, even after 50 years.

[eyesup]

I long ago discarded the social and cultural rules that define beauty. My wife/companion will always be the best I have found. It is the soul and spirit of what she is that keeps me in orbit around her.

Duane

[BlueTrain]

If you've been married as long as I have, which really isn't that long (39 years), you have to accept that your spouse is going to change a little over the years. The man won't change, no matter what (he may look different) but the woman will.

I went to my fiftieth high school reunion four years ago. I had a lot of fun. I was pleased that anyone remembered me as well as they did. I didn't recognize everyone there (it was the first reunion I attended) but not everyone there was a member of that class. Some were spouses from another year or another place. Some I expected to see weren't even members of that class, but from the year before or the year after. Most changed in appearance the way you would have expected but nobody's personalities and mannerisms had changed at all. And a couple of people looked like they had scarcely aged one bit. It was also surprising to me that some were still living there in that small town in West Virginia.

[eyesup]

I've not been to any of my class reunions. The friends from back then that I am still in touch with I can see when I visit home. I've always thought that tradition a little odd.

Maybe I'll be the exception and change! 

Duane

[Greenbare Woods]

I started attending class reunions after 25 years.  Lots of good people with whom I have a lot in common after growing up in the same culture.  My team won the first place trophy in a golf tournament at our  50th year reunion.  I was thrilled.  It was the only golf trophy I ever won.   The list of departed classmates gets longer every year.  They don't have nudist activities at the reunions.

Bob

[BlueTrain]

I was likewise struck by the number of classmates, class of 1964, who had already died when I attended the reunion. There were two large tables with their photos. But then, I'm always struck when I see the death notices in the paper of anyone younger than me who have died. I had only contacted by e-mail three people before attending that reunion and when I created a new e-mail address (had been using the one at work), I sent out the new e-mail address. One came back. The recipient had died a year ago. She was my lab partner in high school chemistry--I think. She was a twin and I don't remember which one it was.

I mentioned that some still live there. They have a once-a-month brunch at the local Cracker Barrel that I'll have to plan my visits around.

[jbeegoode]

I went to a couple of reunions. I didn't see them as unchanged. I saw people falling back into their old roles and ways of interacting, like a learned subconscious behavior, a comfortable place to be. Bad rude kid-ness came out. Old friends tended to attract the same old friends.

Of these people that I had seen outside of those two affairs, my interactions were different in those times. People do change, they have to change they are required to adapt to new circumstance, they gather themselves up into new trips. Probably less so in many small town circumstances. There was change in that as time went on, they were less eager to please, impress and get attention.

I have a long list of people that I have been, some in retrospect are flip flops. There are lessons to be learned in a life, but it is a process of unlearning. Some unlearn faster than others. The last ten years, I've been getting back to my roots and goals that I started out with, but it is a completely new twist. Some of my friends became their parents.

The change is there. Its just that old habits reoccur when old situations present themselves.
Jbee

[BlueTrain]

People presumably change some. If nothing else, we all get older. But I'm not so sure about unlearning something. If anything, I think we learn new things that get overlaid on top of what we already know. I'm not referring to habits, however, which you may be. I don't know that you ever lose your roots. But if you mean by cutting down the tree, you get back to your roots, then you may be on to something. You might grow a little differently in different soil, in a manner of speaking. But just like a tree, you're either growing or dying. Nothing is going to stay the same.

Reunions, if anything, are where you expect to see old friends, not to make new ones. To renew old acquaintances and to catch up with the news of the past decades. In my case, I moved away and so I'm the one who has to go back, even to see such family as I have left back home.

[nuduke]

I've been to a couple of class reunions and had a couple of individual reunions with classmates of the 1960s and in every case the conversation just seemed to pick up from where it left off about 40 years ago.  Its uncanny.  Your friends of teenage years were friends and that vibe seems to rekindle again on the reunion - people change but some stuff deep down stays constant over time I reckon.  Or maybe its just that we don't see eachother for 40 years and therefore all that's left is the old camaraderie, that starts the conversation off.  Those reunions I've had have mostly been very positive.
John

[eyesup]

It wasn't at a class reunion, but at my niece's wedding reception that I saw someone from those days that was so changed I didn't recognize her. I wasn't that I thought I knew who it was, I was simply curious WHO it was. I didn't even suspect that I once knew her.

I asked my sister, "Who is that?" and was amazed at the answer!
Time, 30+ years, doesn't take as big a toll as life does.

Duane

[John P]

"I went to my class reunion, but everyone had got so fat and ugly that they didn't recognize me!"