I'm Woke, and Other Reasons I Got Out of Bed

When I got out of bed this morning, I was in pain.

It wasn't that serious call-the-tv-commercial-lawyer-so-I-can-sue-someone-for-something kind of pain, just a little soreness to remind me that I'm not a young person anymore.

My morning discomfort hasn't been the only indication of my squatter's rights into middle age.

More often than before I utter "old person" things about today's music being trash and romantically reminiscing about the true greats of the past. You know, the 80's. I struggle mightily to find appropriate clothing, stuck in the middle of a mental youth and an aged physique.

Recently, I even found myself turned off by a group of hooligans that had been loitering at the Panera. You should have seen how they basically took over the whole place with their laughing and carrying on, as they continued their Bible study.

That being said, I don't mind getting older. As a matter of fact, I have no interest in returning to my teenage years. Maybe LeBron James' teenage years, but definitely not mine.

But I'm still angry!

One of the true gifts of becoming older is the peace and resolve you have of the opinions you've developed. The reason I say "developed," is because it takes life, experience and challenges to make and sometimes change your opinions.

What's fantastic about your adult opinions is how comfortable it is to be in your own skin. Most grown-ups still interact and have relationships with those of differing perspectives. We accept others and often engage in terrific debates on topics which we share no common ground. And when it's all over, we all go home to and sleep like a baby.

Enter "woke culture."

If you haven't been playing along with at-home version of what the 24 hour news cycle should be called, As My Stomach Turns, you may have missed being woke.

Basically "woke" means that you've been enlightened to a perspective that you may not have been sympathetic to in the past. While once specifically a social issue reference, woke now means becoming aware of anything that you weren't aware of before.

For instance if you really enjoy candy corn, but didn't realize it wasn't a vegetable, like a sweet potato, and this new wisdom prevents you from serving it at dinner, you then have been woke to the manipulative marketing and mind control of the Big Candy lobbyists. Fool me once, candy corn!

What's even more important to understand is what it means if you're not woke. Not woke is a label that indicates that you don't share someone else's more sophisticated opinion and therefore are ignorant, small-minded and own an opinion that shouldn't really count.

For instance if you have a nagging suspicion that the world is round, but some flat-earther attempts to enlighten you to the long-standing deceit of NASA and every other country's space exploration, but you don't buy it, you are not woke.

This should all sound a little silly to middle-aged people, but for those that haven't lived long enough to have developed their own opinions, this belittling of perspectives that aren't aligned with the cool crowd can be dangerous. I, for one, don't want to see our college kids chase being woke in lieu of being sensible, educated and moral.

So with my middle-aged soreness and love of arena rock ballads, to the woke culture I mutter with my fist in the air, "Go to bed, you long-haired hippie!"