Americans are not much concerned by self inflicted brain damage. This novel, probably controversial and maybe heretical thought occurred to me as I steered the Guzzler Deluxe down the road towards yet another of our seemingly endless Doctor appointments. One of the benefits of getting old is being able to leave the house almost everyday on an expedition to a new Doctor's office. It's a great way to get to know the town a little better, and provides idle time which allows idle thoughts to occupy your mind.
The act of driving a car is, for the most part, a boring job. Push this pedal to go, that one to stop. Mostly driving is about looking for objects outside the car, and deciding if it would be more fun to hit the object or to avoid it. Personally, I prefer to hit small things and avoid larger ones. It's a matter of convenience, and of expense. Running over small things does not cause loss of the use of the vehicle, and therefore there is no associated expense of regaining that use. And, there's a lot of fun to be had bouncing over small objects. I smile much more if I'm bouncing along than I do when the road is boringly smooth. Aiming the tires at, and flattening, a discarded soup can is a thrill, I tell you, and I'll do it every time I get the chance.
For all you other thrill seekers, I'll award bonus thrill points if you manage only one thump while running over the soup can. Mostly there's a thump-thump, but expert drivers will be able to produce only one thump per can. Try it- you'll like it! But, if traveling at any speed above ten miles per hour while trying to collect these bonus points, be sure to have full insurance coverage and a current, fully paid policy in effect.
So anyway, as I was driving along looking for cheap thrills today, I noticed a bunch of folks were talking on their cell phones as they passed me. I used to pass five cars for every one that passed mine, but sadly that ratio is reversed these days. Getting my foot from the gas pedal to the brake takes more time than it used to, and I question my immortality more often than I did in my youth. It's enough to make me drive in the slow lane.
Well, I was dumbfounded. Now all you guys know I don't carry a cell phone - I consider it a leash and besides, if I want some ten dollar an hour guy with a headset over his ears, who gets a paycheck from our Uncle Sam, to know where I am 24 hours a day, he can darn well knock on my door and ask. I may or may not tell him, depending on the size of his gun.
What left me dumbfounded was not the fact they carried a cell phone, but the fact it was actually being used for something other than a camera or a watch. I heard just the other day the stinkin' things are actually modern versions of Flash Gordon's ray guns and they can cook your brains. Well, maybe they can cook your brains. But, ya know, for twenty or thirty years the government studies found only that "Cigarette Smoking May Be Harmful To Your Health." There's one heck of a lobby for the cigarette industry that was able to keep the sorry information that the things would actually kill you from being broadcast far and wide. I'm guessing there is one heck of a lobby for the cell phone industry that these days is keeping the sorry........you figure it out.
"Sure", you say, "he hates cell phones so he's just tryin' to scare the livin' daylights out of me so I'll quit using mine." You may be right. I do hate the things and wish they'd all just be thrown in some lake, hopefully one without any fish because I'm bettin' the phones will cook the fish too. But, cell phones or not, there's other evidence Americans are busy turning their brains to mush on purpose.
How else can all the rehab places be explained? Every town with a population of over 50,000 has at least one hidden somewhere in the middle of a middle class subdivision (after a lengthy fight by the surrounding homeowners) and needs another one. Those things are all the result of popping pills or strong drink, placed inside a body by the person to whom it belongs.
And, a lot of those pills were legally obtained. It seems that's another way we're turning our minds to mush. It takes a bunch of pills to get us through the day. And no wonder - too many cell phones - and other electronic distractions. They keep jarring us to attention and we need some rest.
When all the oil runs out, and it will, I'm betting there will be at least one positive result. We won't need so many pills to calm us. Maybe, there's some hope that because of that event we'll all get a little smarter. Our brains will clear and we'll actually use them to survive, as we once did, and not merely to cope with the distracting gadgets in our modern world.
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