Idaho Falls

62 IDAHO FALLS MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2022 THE OLDER I get, the faster things seem to change. While I am sure this is part of the natural process of aging, I can't help but think that technology is helping to speed this change along. Not only is the way we do things chang- ing, but how we think about things as well. Thanks to the likes of Instagram and TikTok, trends can be created and spread around the world in a matter of hours. The time we have to adapt to these changes is next to nothing. The question we need to ask is if we can emotionally deal with such rapid change. What is interesting is that while new ideas are constantly emerging, they don't always eliminate old ways. The idea of showing the world that we care about someone has been around as long as people. I'm sure that if we had the ability, we could decode some of the paintings on the cave walls of France to find they go beyond stories of the hunt. Somewhere in all those images, I'll bet there's a personal message like "Oog loves Oogett." Wanting to tell the world that you love someone is just part of human nature. How many of you reading this story have carved a desk, picnic table, or even a tree with a heart containing your and your sweethearts' names inside of it? In a more urban setting where trees are harder to come by, spray paint graffiti has become the medium of choice. Undoubtedly, every time I'm stuck on Broadway waiting for a train to finish shuffling its boxcars around, I see amongst all the other colorful graf- fiti some note of affection. Sometimes the text is a bit graphic, but I guess that just means that the artist was really in love, or at least lust. Sometimes, rather than using a cave wall, or a tree, or even a boxcar, someone will take the huge leap of having their sweet- hearts' name inked somewhere on their own body. Fortunately, thanks to advanc- es in laser technology, a breakup doesn't mean you are stuck with the name of someone who is no longer your significant other. In the past, you would have tried to find a really good tattoo artist to try and at least morph the name in the heart to "Mother." In the past few decades, a new way of showing the world your undying love to someone was to write your names with a Sharpie on a padlock and lock it to a bridge. This tradition was first popular- ized by an Italian movie in 2006. The most famous example of this tradition was seen at the Pont des Arts, a bridge in Paris near the Louvre. I was fortunate to see the bridge in all its love-locked glory in 2012 when it had over 750,000 locks on it! Not long after that, the bridge actually started to collapse from the weight of all the locks that lovers kept locking on. In 2015, they removed over 40 tons of locks from the bridge and made it illegal and physically impossible to attach locks to the bridges in Paris. I have found such locks on bridges all over the world. Search the bridges around Idaho Falls and you will even find such locks here. Today, thanks to social media we can use a plethora of platforms to post our undy- ing love to someone. And while you can sandblast graffiti off a boxcar or even laser erase a tattoo, be sure that someone spe- cial is really the right one for you. Once it's posted on the Internet it's there for as long as "Oog loves Oogett." The technology may have advanced, but the consequences could still be as uncomfortable. IF Signs of PHOTO AND STORY BY GREGG LOSINSKI Affection OUT THERE

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