Just a trifle

More years ago than I want to think about, during my sometimes misspent youth, everything – absolutely everything - was important: What I was going to be when I grew up, how often I was on my high school’s Dean’s List and which of my friends were on it too.

What I wore was important, along with where I wore it, precisely what color eyeshadow would make my green eyes look greener and where I could get a trendy haircut.

By the time I was in college other things were important like what I had to do to graduate and what it took to land a job at the New York Times.

By the time I was a working journalist my focus on importance shifted again to what I needed to wear in order to be taken seriously as the latest high-profile member of the Chicago press corps, and how much I really weighed.

Every story, every news tip, every phone call I made to a source - or even to my closest pal – was significant for some reason or another. So was the price of gasoline in California and the cost of living in Amsterdam.

Any story about picnicking in Grant Park or whether Madonna had checked into the Drake Hotel was just a trifle. So was any book published solely for its entertainment value.

After all, the world was burning down with crime and graft and economic roulette. I was into what was important. Not a trifle for sure.

These days though the trifles preoccupy me. I’m interested in stuff like which fast food restaurant has the cleanest rest rooms and the friendliest staff, or whether the local grocery store is offering a two-for-one deal on coffee.

Suddenly it matters that Taylor Swift is engaged to an NFL star and who wore what to the Met Gala this year. At the same time, my conversations with longtime friends in this country or the UK or France have to do with the cancers we survived and the serious conditions challenging our spouses.

What I write now has to do with random observations about the world and the way ordinary people live it. It also includes a serialized novel about a fictitious community of oddballs.

Every word is a trifle for sure.

But the world is burning down with crime and graft and economic roulette.

I think we all need a trifle just now.