Ever heard the expression “no need to re-invent the wheel?” Sure you have. It’s been around since ... well... sometime right after the wheel was invented.

That expression came to my mind today when I read a story out of San Francisco where there supposedly is a new breed of “Gen Xers” who call themselves “Yawns.” That stands for “Young and Wealthy but Normal.” The acronym doesn’t quite spell it all out, but let’s say it’s handgrenade close.

They drive hybrid cars, if they drive at all. They shop at local stores, if they shop at all. And they pay off their credit cards every month, if they use them at all. They have disposable income, but they live below their means. They say it’s an effort to tread lightly on the earth.

So let me go back several decades. I didn’t drive a hybrid car, but I didn’t waste gas either. I went to my first high school dance in my dad’s pickup truck after I washed the fertilizer out of the back. I didn’t have a sports coup.

I shopped at the local store. I especially liked the old Suwanne Grocery. It had a big box filled with ice and you could fish around in it until you found an Orange Crush or until your hand got numb. We didn’t have credit cards, we used the lay-away concept. You didn’t actually get it until you made the last installment. It just “laid away” behind the counter, and you got more excited with each payment. And then you appreciated it when you finally took it home.

Also, I was taught to respect the earth. We terraced and fought erosion at every turn. Maybe that’s the same thing as walking lightly on it. We grew a lot of our food and a windmill pumped our water. We also hugged trees, depending on how hot it got and how long the peanut rows were to the shade in the fence row.

And yes, I was wealthy by my interpretation. I was part of a loving family. We worked very hard. But we also hunted, fished, played ball, swam in the creek and swung from Tarzan vines. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons we made ice cream on the front porch. We cooled watermelons in the creek, and we listened to the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Milwaukee Braves at night while we shelled butterbeans. And we talked with each other when we all sat down at the supper table.

As for the “normal” part, I think we were very normal but also humble. I’m not exactly sure what “normal” means in reference to the “Yawns.” It was normal for us to go skinny dipping in the creek with only a small chance of being harassed by a snapping turtle. Today the greatest fear might be mercury poisoning. You could get strangled doing a cannon ball and turn into a thermometer.

I did not know back then that I was ahead of my time.

In other words, someone is now officially practicing common sense, and it’s making the news. Who would have ever thunk it? Current events tend to be so dominated these days with “stupid” that I suppose some folks got distracted to the point that they thought they could re-invent the wheel, having never recognized that it rolled long before they came onto the scene.

Speaking of wheels, have you ever wedged yourself in an old tractor tire and let someone roll you down through the pasture? Again, I’m not going to get too deep into that “normal” thing. It just leaves too much room for interpretation.

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. E-mail: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)