Moods
As teens in the 1970s, we first flexed our consumer muscles by prowling trendy boutiques in search of suede leather garb (vests, skirts, bags and moccasins) paisley print fashions, midriff blouses and mood rings that “magically” reflected the wearer’s emotional state. Finally, a cheap pretty ring to decode the mysteries of our mercurial thoughts and feelings!
“The ring says I’m sad. The ring says I’m in love. The ring says I’m anxious. The ring says I’m elated. The ring says I’m doomed.” All were true in the moment.
Every pubescent girl needed the morphing colors of a mood ring to plumb the heights and depths of our sensitive shifting temperaments. Spanning the color spectrum from amber yellow, through the jewel tones, to a shadowy gray, a mood ring somehow validated the colliding fervors that forever churn in young beating hearts.
We crooned along to the schmaltzy hit song about “Feelings” while wallowing in ours, gazing into the little polished glass surfaces on our fingers, looking for proof of our capricious natures.
Mood rings, oval domed stones set in silver-plated bands, were so popular in 1975 that their sales value rocketed to $15 million. The fad was short lived though as ringmakers flooded the market. Once you bought a ring, you didn’t want another one. (These were the days before Oprah convinced us we needed eight of everything.)
We didn’t really question the science behind our fascination with mood rings any more than we challenged the workings of Magic Eightballs or Ouija boards. Part of the fun lay in not knowing.
Later we would learn that the mystic rings were simply reacting to varying temperature of our skin rather than our hot and cold moods.
The use of liquid crystal elements in medical thermometers inspired the designers of costume jewelry to borrow the concept of thermosensitive elements in making rings and pendants. The plastic/glass “stones” in a mood ring, available online for $12-$25, shift their hue in reaction to ambient temperature.
Enchanted rings cannot reveal our nation’s mood swings, but if possible, they might signal a gathering darkness in consumer confidence and worries about what happens next in America’s scary headlong jump into the unknown.
Today all the fun has leached out of not knowing.
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The shiny yellow hopes voters held for affordable goods and a booming economy in a post-Biden era have turned murkier with every newly imposed tariff. Uncertainty surrounds the impacts a global trade war will cost American consumers.
So-called Liberation Day is here, triggering apprehension that reciprocal tariffs are likely to liberate more cash from the already-thinned wallets of middle-class families. Our consolation is that in 15 years, automated robots will fill assembly line jobs to manufacture fad trinkets made right here in the good ol’ USA.
Considering the surreal daily chaos in government leadership, it’s not surprising that Americans may be feeling the blues.
Arbitrary and uninformed decisions made by the richest man in the world and his squad of lifelike drones are raising anxiety among Americans concerning deep cuts to government programs that support veterans, disaster victims, senior citizens and the disabled, real-time weather information, school lunches, Medicaid, public education, food and drug safety, medical research, consumer protections, equal opportunity, treatment of mental illness and addiction.
We wonder whether Elon Musk’s unhinged efficiency team manifests a sincere effort to reduce government waste since the administration’s proposed budget embraces tax reductions while adding trillions of dollars in federal spending. The combined salaries of fired civilian workers is chump change within our crushing national debt.
Promises to “drain the swamp” could ideally have meant ending the rampant parasitic corruption that thrives between lawmakers and deep-pocketed special interests.
Privatization of public services means we will be paying the commercial business sector — and the IRS — while digging an ever-deeper pit of debt. That scenario should blacken the shade of any taxpayer’s mood ring.
Likewise, a new and improved mood ring would flash red to alert us of hoax remedies such as giving a child a teaspoon of castor oil to prevent the spread of measles instead of protecting them with the proven MMR vaccine.
Did we as voters mandate bizarre attacks on the arts, world geography, national parks, U.S. history and the Smithsonian? Did we endorse the disrespect of our allies and the denunciation of sovereignty in Ukraine, Greenland and Canada? Are we okay with the blanket pardons of 1,500 violent rioters because they were wearing the right color of hat?
Maybe Americans just want to be able to pay our bills, earn a living wage to support our families, access affordable health care and keep The U.S. Constitution intact.
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