"So, what was Reagan really like?"

There I was in my favorite Apple store, perched on a stool, and eyeing my 'Creative' who was going to guide me through the potentially perilous process of setting my iPhone to automatically sync with dotme and my computer through some pie-in-the-sky cloud feature. (Note to Apple: Consumers shouldn't try this at home which may be why it took 10 days to get the appointment.) But that's neither here nor there for the purposes of this blog post.

My guide had just queried about my expertise on Apple products (longer than he was old but I didn't say that) and I'd given him the year: 1985. (I would let him do the math.) He had smiled and said I'd be able to teach him (yeah, right. I get my computer the way I want it and I'm loathe to change.) when the young Apple employee on the other side of the table came up with the question at the top of the blog.

"So, what was Reagan really like?"

Talk about a question coming out of the blue. As the Reagan years encompassed the majority of the '80s, I'd have to say the young man looked to have been born during his tenure. Mere curiosity about the regime he'd been born under?

I smiled and laughed. "He was a gentleman," I said. "And interest rates were good."

That satisfied him. But what else could I have said? I was busy with toddlers and then starting Cub Scouts, PTA, and volunteering in the community. The '80s were swift, but not, I fear, as swift as the last decade. Next January ends the first 10 years of the 2000s. I can tick off what I've done, where I've been, but in hindsight, the years have vaporized.

What will I tell my grandchildren when they ask of their birth president, "So, what was Bush like?"

"He was a gentleman," I'll say, "and he had a lovely wife and then there was 9/11 and things didn't go so well for any of us."

I'll work on it.