All TV screened out

As I took it out of the box, I wondered if I had made a mistake. Another screen? What was I thinking? Until now, my house only had one TV. That’s far below the American average of 33.5 per household. (Why do so many Americans have half a TV?) No TVs in the bedrooms. No TVs in the bathroom. No TVs in the toaster oven. There was one in the living room, and that’s where all the fighting took place. Saturday mornings. When my daughter wants to watch cartoons and I want to watch soccer. “Mom!” I would say, stomping off. “She’s hogging the TV again!” I always lose, then trudge off to watch a game on the computer. It’s not the same. So when we took some toys and a little kid kitchen playset out of the loft, I decided to put a TV up there. Screen No. 2. The fighter preventer. Oh goody! But as I pulled the new set out of the box — a TV that could miraculously connect to the Internet all by itself, and patch into the Hubble space telescope, and tell me the future, and synthetically create a PB&J sandwich at the touch of a button — I wondered if I had made the right decision. Shouldn’t I be eliminating screens, not adding them? Because this wasn’t really the second screen in the house. There was also the computer, as well as the iPad. And the Kindle. Some days I bring the laptop […]

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It’s not a sprint: The end of another college year

This is college. The end of the semester. Down to the final two weeks. Before summer sets in. Re-charge time. But for now — these last couple weeks — it’s mayhem. All hands on deck. Jostling and bumping and frantic paper writing and frantic paper grading. Student. Teacher. It doesn’t matter. It always reminds me of the inside of that tornado in “The Wizard of Oz.” Swirling. Cows flying. Bits of debris and wicked witches on broomsticks. If you look carefully at that scene, there’s a college student racing to turn in a final exam. Look carefully. When you work on a college campus, this time of year always takes you back. It was when you realized that the old cliché, “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” was complete bunk. Because that was true three months ago, when there was an entire semester ahead of you. When you should have listened to old clichés. But with two weeks to go, it WAS a sprint! A 26.2-mile sprint! How often I hear someone say, “I have to write 15 papers, do 17 presentations, take 11 final exams, complete a portfolio that encapsulates my entire college career, find dark matter in the universe … and I have 20 minutes to do it. So … anyone for coffee?” Remember those days? And you always managed. Somehow we got it done. College students have the ability to bend the space-time continuum. To defy physics in an eternal quest for that miraculous Hail Mary. […]

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An open letter to technology everywhere

Dear Technology, I am beginning to despise you. And everyone else does, too. Please don’t take it personally. It’s just you’re making us crazy. We really want to be friends — to get along and have picnics together. But you don’t make it easy. You’re always ringing and buzzing in our pockets. Crying out for attention. Take your “email,” for example. Who are you fooling? The “e” doesn’t stand for “electronic.” It stands for “egad.” Because that’s the reaction I have whenever I realize there are 472 new messages in my inbox. It’s only been 12 minutes since I deleted the last 472! Do you know that makes me wet my pants. I panic. I rush to my computer. I know something incredibly valuable awaits me. A message from the lottery about my millions … even though I don’t play the lottery. An invitation to join arctic explorers on a secret mission. A message from the president about an idea to solve world hunger using spare ketchup packets from fast food restaurants. Something good, right? But there’s nothing but junk. Explain that to me? Or this one: My house is “wireless,” right? So why does it have more wires than ever before? I had to have my phone lines upgraded for a new service that everyone in my area is being upgraded to. When the technician arrived he asked why he was there. “Why? Because your company said we had to wait here between 9 and noon so you could […]

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The superhero housing … out by the interstate

My wife the pre-school teacher gets asked all kinds of questions. But I loved this one: “Where do all the superheroes live?” She didn’t know how to respond. I think it struck her as slightly ridiculous. “Little boys and their superheroes. Goodness me!” Yeah, I thought to myself as she told me, where do all the superheroes live? Great question little kid. Don’t you just love the mind of a child that age? That it’s so simple and unburdened by the problems of, say, a second grader: What am I going to wear today? Should I use this color of red Crayon or that color of red Crayon? Or my problems, which usually involve a bill, or a work project, or why I pressure washed the back deck before the oak trees finished dropping 17 tons of yellow mash. (I mean, what was I thinking!?!) Talk about not a care in the world. I so wanted to answer that question: “Well, a couple live out by the interstate, near the outlet mall. One’s on the island, in a cave, powered by … nuclear-powered … bat guano …” (My superhero stories are not very elaborate or good.) But it got me thinking like a grownup kid: Where DO all the superheroes live? Do they meet for coffee on Saturdays to compare stories and bat around ideas? “You know, these new corrective lenses not only help my nearsightedness, but also focus my eye lasers when I’m cutting through steel.” Do they do […]

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