"THOSE WHO CANNOT DO . . . "

I had a fourth grade teacher who encouraged my creative writing, so (imagine the Groucho Marx tone and cigar), "I got more and more creative as time went on (wag cigar and huge eyebrows)."

Once the concept of a diary registered completely on my pre-adolescent brain, I immediately began to commandeer every possible journal, old calendar log and spiral notebook that came anywhere near me and began to stockpile.

That may have been where my (bordering on criminal) obsessive relationship with office supplies.

Some people dream of being locked up overnight in the Louvre - winning a million dollars in the lottery - having 3 minutes to grab all the diamonds they can at Tiffany's.

I fantasy about being let loose in an Office Depot - Staples - Office Max.

Even aisles B-4 through B-7 in Target.

But I digress (which is why I have a blog - I can digress as much as I want - so there).

Proportionately to my fixation on office supplies, my writing steadily increased over the years to the point where the Bic Corporation petitioned me to at least allow ink production to catch up to my use.

When I joined the LDS church in 1976, and was introduced to the church counsel of keeping a journal, I already had nine years of recording completely random events, observations, mood elevations (this was before antidepressants were commonly prescribed), and catty remarks about people I didn't like.

Oh, wait, a journal is supposed to be uplifting, spiritual records of your mortal progress?

Hell, NO.

My journal/diary/scribbles are where I gripe, complain, whine and belly-ache.

However, tomorrow I am responsible to teaching a class of twelve-year olds about record keeping... which I can loosely translate into journal keeping... and hopefully turn into an actual journal -entry session.

Let's see how this goes.

YOU ARE NOW IN THE FUTURE

Jen sent this wonderful YouTube link about a Conan O'Brien guest talking about how "Everything Is Amazing, and NoBody's Happy."


It's sort of a neat coincidence (or cosmic luck,) that tonight I was talking to my older brother (57 year-old hippie who tunes pianos in Wisconsin - I could write a book), and we were comparing some futuristic 50's predictions, and how things actually turned out.


I loved how my brother put it - "We didn't get robots like we expected - we just got smarter appliances."


Instead of a robot to answer your phone, the phone became an answering machine - then cordless - then wireless. To clean your house, we didn't envision Dustbusters, bagless vacuums, carpet washers. In fact, wall-to-wall carpeting wasn't common until what, the 60's?


The Internet - Issac Asimov's "Multivac" in 1956; iPhone to a Star Trek communicator; H.G. Wells described portable television.. this was in 1899, folks.


If you were able to view the future in, say 1956 (year of my birth - yes, when dinosaurs roamed the earth), how would you describe these to the cavemen who lived back then?

- An iPod? DVDs?

- Electronic voting? (Well, at least when it works correctly; I'm still miffed that Gore lost in Florida back in 2000)


- How you could file your taxes on the Internet?

- How we use debit cards?

- ATMs - man, how did we live when you had to go the actual bank BEFORE 4 p.m. to get cash? Hmm... maybe that's why we are all so badly in debt - another topic for another time.

- Having closed-caption television (a necessity of life for me-of-limited-hearing)


- Using automatic sliding doors every time you go into the mall.... heck, what about MALLS?

And for goodness sake, a BLOG?


Now, granted, there are some things we all thought would have by now.


We would all be a heck of a lot smarter - we would have eliminated wars, disease, and have communities on the moon and Mars... and certainly better late-night television.


But hey, I'm very happy about the things I do have.