PLEASE DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO

“Does Anybody Really Know What Time It is?” original sculpture & installation by KSR

In case you haven’t noticed, the world is changing around us, and doing so as we speak. A new faster must-have gadget comes on the market hourly. I’m sick of having to learn something new every week or so.

We have a new 55 inch TV in the family room which replaced a perfectly good 50″ one. The small TV in the kitchen gave up the ghost, so we went to the store to replace it, but came home with two new TV’s. Dr. Advice is ecstatic. The big one does things we don’t even need. It has a button that says “Smart” with a picture of a little house. It connects with an HD receiver, and the DVI to the HDMI connection. It connects to your mobile phone. You can even have a Magic Remote control. I don’t know what that is. We have 4-5 remote controls we can never find when needed now. They control Blu-Ray, VHS, surround sound, receiver, and something else I can’t remember. And the ironic thing about it that we don’t really watch TV! We watch PBS and movies. We get all the important stuff from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the lousy local rag. We suffer from information overload. I know this sounds dinosaurish, but one of the pluses of maturity is that your own collection of grey cells contains more than you will ever use in the way of information. The best thing about all of this is that none of it talks to you.

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Everyone around me seems to have the latest edition of computer, Smartphones, or whatever, and many of them talk to you. I don’t want a machine telling me what to do. My dear son-in-law was my guru and go-to guy for whatever was new in the tech world. I didn’t need a talking cellphone or computer. My current cell phone calls in and calls out. That’s all I need it to do. Two of our grandchildren, aware of his store of knowledge had a secret saying whenever things could or might go wrong, “WWUDD?” Which meant: “What would uncle Dick do?”

He was in on the birth of modern technology forty plus years ago, and knew what made them all tick inside and out. Everyone over the age of 50 needs to keep friends at least 20 years younger. Better yet, if you get stuck, call a seven year old. Several nights ago a group of intelligent 40-60 year olds, had trouble removing something from the screen of an iPhone. Our seven year old great-granddaughter took it and after one touch of her finger, she calmly handed it back and said “There ya go.” As she turned away she muttered “I can’t believe you didn’t know how to do that!” One of life’s embarrassing moments.

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Several years ago, grocery stores began offering the option of “Self-Serve” stations, so that you can slip your card in and check out your own groceries by clicking the appropriate space on the lighted screen. If you make a mistake, it throws a fit and tells you to call for help. Once that’s done, you place the already checked items on a lower platform and continue. If you place anything, even a paper bag on the platform too the machine yells loudly to get it OFF! When through checking, you click “Finish and Pay”. It refuses to move until you tell them if you brought your own bag. After you’re through it yells “Please remove your groceries!” in a frantic voice. Heck, I haven’t even had time to put my wallet back in my purse.

The annoying voice on my GPS when we take a direction she didn’t tell us to, disgustedly tells us that she is “Relocating!” Sometimes we change directions just to tick her off.

All of which says “please don’t tell me what to do”! I like to make my own mistakes and discoveries thank you. Better yet, try making things simpler like the old “on-off” button our radios used to have, and we won’t need an instruction manual for every new thing you invent each week.

TRAVELERS VS. TOURISTS

 There are two types of people in this world; travelers and tourists.  Tourists can’t wait to come back home.  Travelers never want to come back.

“But why do we travel, really?  If we are of a thoughtful nature, we may wish to improve our minds, to examine the manners and customs of others and compare them to our own.  For these reasons, we study guidebooks and make lists of the churches, palaces, galleries, and museums we’ll visit.  We take photographs and write our impressions in diaries.  We might even justify the expense of the trip by planning to share our knowledge with others upon our return.

But is it really an education that we yearn to acquire when we travel?  Or–be honest, now–do we more sincerely desire souvenirs?  What tourist returns with lighter bags than those he packed at home?  We want something to display, a memento, a “conversation piece” that will silently inform a guest that ‘I have traveled’.  We look for a painting, a sculpture, a vase that will whisper: I have shopped in foreign countries, and I have this to show for it.

Of course, one could buy such objects ay home.  After all, there are importers, antique shops and art galleries.  Why then do we undertake the expense and risk of travel?  Why leave the comforts of home for flies and disease, heat and dust, crowds and the risk of theft?  Because souvenirs remind the traveler of his journey.”

We do not take a trip.  Often a trip takes us.

John Steinbeck says there is a Spanish word for which there is no English counterpart; vacilando.  It means you are going somewhere but you don’t greatly care if you get there.  My aunt was very much like that.  She loved travel, and she was good at it.  I think she would have chosen to be perennially on the road.

There are map people who delight in being navigators, expecially on a road trip.  While the driver is enjoying the scenery, he/she is busy reading the maps.  There are also people who are terrified of being lost, whether on foot or in a car.  They never veer from the preordained plan, or take a sudden look at a point of interest off the beaten path.  Then there are people who set a daily goal for themselves and come hell or high water, they plunge on until they arrive at their goal, even if their passengers need food or bathroom facility.  The use of the GPS means less random–but not nearly as much fun travel, if you can stand the annoying female voice ordering you to “turn left in one mile”, or “you’ve gone too far”.

When you return, friends ask “Did you have a nice time on your trip?”  We want to answer in full.  We want to tell about all the interesting and educational things we have seen, but they need to hurry away.  We say we will invite them over to see our pictures, but somehow that never happens.  So we slip right back into our cosy and comfortable lives as if we had never left them, and file all those wonderful memories away in our mental banks to be drawn upon at random.  But travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry.  We shall get there some day.”  A.A. Milne