Posted: Monday, November 23, 2009 11:15 am
The beauty of a low-tech existence:
Not a century ago, it really takes me back less than a generation. The old days when you didn’t miss sending messages because you were out of tower range, you made contact with your family over the dinner table. You never lost a connection because you couldn’t find your phone or its batteries were down. You didn’t need that $900 exercise machine, you kept fit by getting up every 10 minutes to change the TV.
Even with your door unlocked, your kids were safe without a $4,000 security system. They were just outside playing with the neighborhood kids, not down at the mall with some unknown/unnamed friends. You weren’t awakened at night by somebody’s unattended car alarm. Telemarketers had to manually scan the phone books to get your number before trying to sell you something you didn’t want or need. Coffee was coffee and didn’t come from some Frankenstein machine.
TV didn’t broadcast porn, so you didn’t need a chip to keep it out of your house and computers weren’t old or sophisticated enough to produce a pedophile threat. If not an Ozzie-and-Harriet lifestyle, you could provide for your family without your wife working a second or third job. You knew where your kids were and whom they were with. You had enough to eat, but didn’t need Jenny Craig.
You knew if your daughter tried to leave the house like a skank in clothes sized for a Barbie Doll or your son dressed like a refugee from a horror film with pants below his butt and chains and gang tattoos everywhere. You bought a car you could afford without ransoming your future and thoughts of retirement were for a simple existence, not floating on the Caribbean in a drug king’s yacht.
VAUGHN PHELPS
Twin Falls