| In
spite of all of the so called ‘labor’ saving devices that I own. I still find
myself looking around trying to find something I have either misplaced or forgotten
almost every day of my life. The
other night we were sitting around the table talking and my wife brought up the
fact that we had once owned a car that had gotten wrecked five times in a row.
I remember the car, but cannot for the life of me remember the wrecks. I suppose
to me it just wasn’t that important to me at the time. I had other things going
on in my life to fill up what brain space I had.
Maybe what happens to
us as we get older is that we fill up our memory space with materials for all
of the years we’ve lived so far. That’s why kids can remember stuff so much easier,
they don’t have as much in their brains. Then as we get older we tend to just
drop some of the stuff out that didn’t seem to be important and then after that’s
done, we begin to question our memory.
This morning I sit down and start
to write this column. Usually I jot down notes each week over something I think
might be of interest or that I can write about. Believe me, once you’ve written
over 1300 columns concerning just about everything under the sun, you need to
keep some notes just so you can keep coming up with something new and original
each week. I look around for any and everything to expound upon. So, this afternoon
I look for my notes, can’t find them. They aren’t in a notebook I carry around
with me to actually write something down. I can’t find any notes anywhere.
Not
in my computer at the office, not in my laptop, nor at my computer at home. All
three have different sets of files on them as well as photos. So if I’m looking
for a photograph of someone I have to search through those three computers, not
to mention looking on my cell phone. It’s lucky I don’t have on my IPod or that’d
be another place to look.
Now in the old days, you just looked in a photo
album or through some stacks in the spare bedroom closet. Today these things could
be in any number of places. Same thing with phone numbers, you used to have a
little book or a rolodex, you just flipped through the pages and voila there was
your number. Then you had to actually DIAL the number….by hand, using your fingers.
So, what did this accomplish? Simple, if you called your grandmothers house (as
I often did when I was a kid) it forced you to remember her number (JA-2-2675)
after fifty years. Today my kids are on voice call or speed dial so if I had to
actually try and remember their numbers, I’d be up the creek. Dialing 17 on anything
other than my cell phone for my son Chris isn’t going to get me anywhere. Speaking
my wife’s name into a payphone won’t get to her either.
I suppose I could
eliminate these problems by buying another one item does all tool. Then keep everything
on one piece of electronic gear, photos, numbers, files, letters, songs, movies…you
name it and its there. But the problem with that is simply this…if that gets lost
or stolen your life as you know it is over.
You see people walking around
like zombies crying to themselves and in dire straits because they laid their
new cell phone/computer/mp3 player/camera/movie/TV machine down on a bar somewhere
and went to the bathroom only to return and find it had been stolen. They immediately
go into a form of shock. I have noticed a large increase in zombie movies and
books lately and am beginning to think that these aren’t really dead people but
people who are distraught over having their entire life on some handheld device.
How long will it be before we see organized kidnapping taking place of these things?
It could happen.
Enough for this week.
© Peary
Perry
Letters From North America
- July 16,
2010 column
Syndicated weekly in 80 newspapers
Comments go to pperry@austin.rr.com |
