Soothing effect, now, of "Wear Sunscreen"

We all must be wondering in the recesses of our minds if the worst is yet to come. Following our innate nature, we just want to get through the immediate day, and if we do, we'll ponder if our even keel will just continue, somehow. We can repress the more panicky thoughts.
I am probably more aware of the dire scenarios than most people - just my nature. People who envision the worst outcomes do a favor: helping us prepare/anticipate.
In the short term we'll become more austere. It's natural but also a departure from our home base norms. Such as, having your hair cut by an appropriate professional. It has become a little harder in our Morris MN community anyway with the departure of Dave Evenson.
What a significant change: no more barber with the barber pole in a community of 5000. We see the reality and move on. Dave told me once there was a time when it was against the law for a woman to cut a man's hair. The town barber was an institution in Norman Rockwell's America. We couldn't imagine any departure from this. Until it happened, at which point we do what we always do: persist with life day-by-day and making practical decisions accordingly.
As severe as the current pandemic is, we get up each morning and simply do what we need to do. The day before us is our priority. It's in the recesses of our minds how drastic our whole American landscape might change long-term. Politicians will say the crisis will be handled in short order. What else could they possibly say? We pay them to be heartened by the future. Herbert Hoover proclaimed in 1930 that the dark clouds would abate. What else could he say?
Republicans are less likely than Democrats to give us the hard truths about the lasting effects of crises. Democrats acknowledge the purpose of government in a more fundamental way, asserting its presence as something leading us out of an abyss. Because surely, an abyss is already where we have fallen.
What fountain of wisdom might we tap? Even if it's just a few intangibles you are looking for? My mind conjures up the "Wear Sunscreen" speech. It's an exhibit from the early days of the Internet, as we became fascinated with things going "viral."
So at present we must cut our own hair. From the "Wear Sunscreen" speech: "Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85." Cutting your own hair simply to keep looking civilized seems optimally healthy, right? You might say organic or primal. We aren't seeking to modify or manipulate our hair so as to keep up with a certain "look" on the cover of a women's magazine. We'll keep our hair short to be civilized and sanitary, not to try to abide by certain whimsical standards.
So with time, as professional hair cutting is no-go, we'll get used to seeing each other with the homemade jobs. And will we care? I think not at all. I find I even regret not doing this more all through my life, to attack certain "offending" strands of hair that had gotten too long. Heavens, I could certainly have postponed haircuts. But I wouldn't be able to see barber Dave as often.
He was like the shoeshine character in the 1980s TV sitcom "Police Squad" in which Leslie Nielsen would get all the neighborhood "scoops" (well, gossip) from the shoeshine. But, only after he peeled out some large cash denominations and gave it to the guy.
So I decided to review the whole "Wear Sunscreen" speech from 1997. There is other fodder there that relates to our current circumstances. The circumstances are prompting many of us, I'll argue, to reflect more across the breadth of our lives, almost as if we are grappling with our mortality, which we are! They say that when we die, our lives flash in front of us just prior. Now as we see the number of virus victims and we see our comfortable norms for day to day living just vanish, I think we are inclined to look over the long breadth of our lives. How much time did we really waste in college?
So consider the following passage from "Wear Sunscreen":
 
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
 
Gee, so I may have looked fabulous? We all ought to think that way. I recently had opportunity to see a video of a TV show I had the privilege of being on, in 1973. Suddenly I was reminded of how I had a nice "part" in my hair, to the right. I'm thinking it really looked nice. I used a hair blower (bought at the old Messner Drug) to try to get "the dry look." Omigod, men do you remember "the dry look?" That took over after the Brylcreem hair grease days. We were so manipulated by fads and trends and surely we allowed ourselves to get manipulated by cigarette TV commercials. We're so embarrassed by that, I'm sure, we're loathe to admit it, n'est-ce pas?
At some point I abandoned the part in my hair and just started combing it straight back. Laziness? I don't remember. I looked so trim and healthy in the TV show in the spring of 1973, when I was a senior at Morris High School. My graduation photo was a duplicate of how I appeared on TV, all the way down to my maroon sport coat.
I was playing the trumpet on TV. This video is now on YouTube, posted by Del Sarlette who's in the video too with father Walt.
The "Wear Sunscreen" speech impresses me more now than when it was current. True wisdom behaves like that. It became the subject for urban legend as it became attributed to Kurt Vonnegut who supposedly gave it as a graduation speech. Totally untrue. Vonnegut would comment that he would be proud to have delivered it. I urge you to call it up and read the whole thing - it will have a soothing effect on you.
"But trust me on the sunscreen."
"Wear sunscreen" had the alternate title "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young." Let us honor here its true author, Mary Schmich, who wrote it as a hypothetical graduation speech.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com