WHAT WERE WE THINKING?

"Check out Rivalfish's new BFF, the one and only Pop Jalopy. He lives in Florida but knows Chicago sports twice as well as any of us. He's generally smarter than us, his interests are more well-rounded, and his wife is surely more beautiful and understanding than any of our furture mail-order brides most-likely will be. So check him out on Rivalfish a couple of times a week, but more importantly, check him out at www.popjalopy.blogspot.com whenever you're feeling the itch. No, not the itch you got from your roommate's girlfriend's slutty little sister.

by Mark Tribbia, aka Pop Jalopy, mark.tribbia@podcom.tv

Old photographs tell strange tales. The style clothes you wore, the people you were with - and the haircut! What the hell were you thinking?

Our past choices in attire and association, good, bad or weird, don't even take into consideration the choices we made which could have had more impact on us later in life than the 80's puffed-up hair craze we embraced. When you consider some of the following, you'll see what I mean.

For instance, until the mid 1960s, cars were made without seatbelts. Mothers sat shotgun, holding infants in their arms, older children played unrestrained in the back seats. Dashboards were made of metal, white hot after 10 minutes in sunlight while front seats where one long bench of vinyl, kind of a Whammo Slip and Slide without the water. Passengers were marbles in a tin can. And for good measure, let's just add the danger and the distraction of Dad smoking while driving. What were we thinking?

Did you know that as late as the 1950s, shoe stores actually had X-ray machines, where you could try on a pair of loafers, stick you foot in the X-ray box and see how your bones fit in the shoe? NO, THIS IS NOT A JOKE. But I ask, what were we thinking?

And the entire lack of environmental regulation prior to 1970 is astounding. On a personal note, in my neighborhood south of 115th Street, there were open fields behind a huge industrial plant were we'd play. Years later, the EPA designated that parcel of land as one of the top ten Superfund hazard sites in the nation. NO, THIS IS NOT A JOKE. I have yet to grow a third arm, but because I glow, never needing a flashlight during hurricane power failures has been a plus.

And insanity remains. People still build homes on golf courses despite the fact that what they're really doing is placing their family in a lovely, toxic field of pesticide. Do you really think that the 5th hole fairway looks that verdant because of luck?

Families still love the pitbull. And really, if you have one pitbull, why do you need two more? Why all the multiple pitbull families? Oh, I'm sure that there are pitbulls that have lived their 13 years 'attack free' and that's fantastic. Bravo, good little pitbull. But next time you hear of a golden retriever ripping four fingers off of a sleeping two year old, call me.

Tanning booths, (people toasters), are in the same Russian roulette category as botox injections, meaning nothing bad happens right away, but don't be surprised if, years of botox don't one day cause a horrible, murderous beast to erupt out of you during a power brunch - a killer demon like the one in the Alien movies.

Imagine that. The demon springs from your ultra-smooth forehead, runs across the conference table to the box of donuts sitting right in front of your CEO, takes a bite of a Krispy Kreme and shouts as he spits out the sugary dough, "What Are You All Thinking?", then crashes through the plate glass window to freedom.

Oh sure, laugh now. But just as an experiment, think ahead from a vantage point five years from now and look back to 2007, asking yourself, "What was I thinking about?" It could be a life changing question.