No county for old men

I have heard people say that the older they get the less they know.

I wonder if that's just a nicer way of saying, "What the hell is going on these days?"

Well, I don't always have that much tact or false modesty. I know what's going on, or at least observe the trends, and I don't often like it. I might not have the reasons why certain things are, but I am not oblivious to the fact that they are happening.

Take this obsession with paving and sealing roads and parking lots in the affluent counties where I live and work. You would think Fairfax and Loudoun counties have nothing better to do with taxpayers' money than to freshen up the pavement at an obsessively frequent rate. While other parts of the country are dealing with potholes the size of your average moon crater, we here in Northern Virginia drive around on shiny parkways. Shopping centers and homeowner's associations also seem to have a fixation with smoothing out the pavement in parking lots at the first sign of a hairline fracture.

This is all fine, I guess. Better than navigating around gigantic cracks and getting realignments every six months. However, there is one big drawback, other than costs, to all this compulsive road maintenance.

We already are in traffic Hell around here! All this cosmetic road work is only adding to the backups and gridlock. Do we really need to tidy up our smaller thoroughfares while major projects like the Metrorail Silver Line (the biggest construction project currently going on east of the Mississippi) routinely close major highways through Fairfax County? Can I just get to the local grocery store without having to dodge orange cones? And where is this money coming from? I constantly hear that there are no funds for anything these days. Yet, the odor of fresh blacktop is always in the air in this part of Virginia.

I suspect the politicians are behind the pavement madness. Mayors of major cities learned a awhile ago that as long as the trash was picked up and the roads were plowed after a snow storm, they had a pretty good chance of staying in office. Voters have their priorities. Well, in these 'burbs (ranked the No. 1 and No. 2 richest counties in the country), the same principle holds true -- except here it's all about making sure the roads are pristine for all of the expensive cars that are going nowhere fast. Problem is, I can't even get out of my neighborhood anymore in order to go sit in the larger traffic jams a few miles away. I'd like to travel a mile or two through Fairfax and Loudoun counties without seeing construction crews. Some of the repairs are necessary, I suppose, some are simply redundant or cosmetic at best.

* * *

While I can take a stab at guessing why the roads in Fairfax and Loudoun counties are constantly being resurfaced, I don't fully understand the following unrelated trends and worsening hiccups. I realize these things, mostly trivial yet symptomatic of something bigger, are irritating and getting worse in the part of the world I call home. None are a deal-breaker for living here, but together they do add to the growing sense of bewilderment I have about modern-day life in Northern Virginia and maybe America in general.

• Why on many radio commercials is there a voice that sounds like the guy is talking through a cheap megaphone or an old ham radio with the volume cranked? Does a scratchy, distant voice somehow give the actor trying to sell a product more credibility or authenticity? I don't remember any financial adviser or home mortgage lender ever speaking to me with a tone that sounded like we were using two empty cans connected by a string. Yet, some advertising genius has come up with this concept that takes the quality audio of the digital age and sends it back to pre-analog days. What good is having an HD radio in one's Lexus if the commercials intentional sound like they were recorded in a cave? (Just for the record, I drive a 7-year-old Jeep).

• I went to a specialist today to have a "re-treatment" done on an 20-year-old root canal gone bad. I've gone to this guy before. He's very good. Loves his work. Has all the modern equipment to do this type of dental procedure. Yet, when he was prepping me, he almost began working on the incorrect tooth on the WRONG side of my mouth. With my mouth stretched open by something that looked like a miniature trampoline, I frantically waved him off, like an NFL referee gesturing that a receiver caught the ball out of bounds. How does this happen? I mean, it's a tooth. They use numbers to identify our molars. They take digital x-rays. They have a tooth chart on the referral slip and they are highly educated people. Even the assistant didn't catch it, and she had just taken x-rays of the tooth minutes earlier on my left side. I was about five seconds away from being needlessly drilled on the right. But these professionals aren't alone. I've noticed more and more screw-ups just like this -- from oil-change places overfilling car engines to coffee shop cashiers forgetting what I ordered a second after I said, "Tall coffee." I can understand if I order a "grande skim vanilla latte, three pumps, with two shots...blah, blah, blah." But c'mon, tall coffee ... and Mr. Barista forgets that order almost before I get out the "fee" in cof-fee? We seem to be having a widespread problem with focusing (yes, I know you're thinking I might be suffering from that as you read this post), regardless of the simplicity of the task or how much expertise one might have in any given field or service industry. Are we becoming too dependent on technology to correct us? Are we just stressed out? What's going on? Perhaps I am just noticing it more.

• Kids in bars have been a pet peeve of mine for the last few years. I recently complained about this new phenomenon to the manager of an eatery that I patronize fairly often. Couldn't understand why there was a kids' soccer team surrounding my cozy pub table while I was trying to watch a baseball game in a comfortably numb, adult state of mind. I don't get today's parents. Even if they couldn't care less about my needs, why would they want their kids looking at an unshaven middle-age man ordering another round and throwing his hands up every time Tyler Clippard blows another save. Why expose children to adult environments and tantrums when there is alternative restaurant seating, away from the bar, that is more suitable in every way imaginable? Is it the new society we live in, where there are no lines, no boundaries? Is it OK for 5-year-olds to belly up to the bar and sit next to a weathered biker on his eighth Bud or a drunken dye blonde with too much mascara? I guess so, because I see it all the time lately. Maybe these new-age parents are so starved for an adult outing that they are going to bring little Johnny to the bar regardless of what psychological scars it might leave on him or how much it annoys the heck out of every mature couple on date night. Folks, if you don't want to give up your bar-hopping days, don't have kids or get something that my parents used to refer to as a "babysitter." Remember those? And restaurant managers, I know you're trying to attract customers, but just remember, when Las Vegas went through its family-friendly stage 25 years ago, tourism plummeted. Seat the kiddies where they should be seated, away from the boozers and adult conversations. Learn from the Vegas experiment or else I'll do my social drinking and sports watching at home, where not only don't I have to be social, but I don't have to pick half-chewed Cheerios off my shoes.

In my somewhat disjointed quest to connect the dots once again, to make sense of it all, I will say that I think a lot of this stuff is just an indication of the current culture of over-the-top entitlement and overload that causes people to lose focus and commonsense. Admittedly, the anxiety and awareness that I feel about these things big and small could also be an indication of my becoming a cranky older man -- the get-off-my-lawn syndrome that overtakes some of us north of 50 years old. If that's the case, I might eventually need to leave this crowded, competitive and privileged area for a place that doesn't assault the senses or test one's tolerance levels like Northern Virginia does.

I am beginning to believe this is no county for old men. I see very few seniors around here. Loudoun, the wealthiest place in America, is becoming a place for young lions looking to make big bucks to support their growing families or tastes in upscale cars. It's a place to compete, whether for a bar stool or airtime on local radio stations or the left lane on highway into Washington. A part of the world where the roads are silky and the taxes are high to pay for the constant stream of new schools and infrastructure, where everyone is seemingly looking for an edge. In that search, we're losing something. Call it authenticity or common sense or just plain competence.

Maybe the entire culture shifts in favor of the young with each passing generation. Perhaps if I were 30 years old I would understand megaphone man on the radio commercials, be grateful for new pavement every six months or not think it's a big deal that a dentist nearly assaults the wrong tooth. Then again, I might not even notice those things. When you're 30, you are busy climbing the corporate ladder, still hanging out with your college buddies or raising kids. I just wish those kids weren't being raised at the bar stool next to mine.