July 1, 2010
-
Silly Putty…
So, I may be aging myself here but when I was little I LOVED Silly Putty. I would run to the paper and stick the gooey substance to my favorite cartoon and just giggle with delight. Yes of course like every other child I tried to eat the salty substance and put it on photos of family members and stretched out the faces to look like a prehistoric version of Stewey from Family Guy. It was good, unsophisticated fun.
Fast forward and it is odd how I am not giggling at the 10,000 pages of contracts, insurance certs, bank forms, etc that I power through my scanner so that I can email them to anyone that needs them. If I worked at it, I could photoshop some of these documents to distort into something that I find vaguely amusing. Hmmm… I don’t think I would ever get to the point of giggling from my scanner. (and no scanning someones rear end is in no way amusing to me).
How did we come so far from simplicity? Perhaps this is a rite of passage for me as I grow through adulthood (nice way of saying over 40) but the items that I spend quality time with such as my kindle, computer, etc cost a small fortune, are not necessarily easy to use and certainly are not as portable as that silly putty. I am keenly aware that you can take the girl out of Carnegie Mellon but can never take the Carnegie Mellon out of the girl so I will always desire the new hot geek toys. I am disappointed that my ipad keypad arrived yesterday but my ipad won’t be here for three more weeks. When did I get so entrenched in smaller, faster, better?
Thankfully, tonight I will take my pound puppies to agility. I don’t do it to be some competitor although we may do that, I do it because it is the same simple fun I had with silly putty. I have ball, dog likes ball, dog wags tail, I throw ball, dog gets ball, dog kisses my face, I wag my tail (not quite as precisely as the dog), everyone happy! I hope that on this upcoming fourth of July weekend, for just a moment, everyone can find a moment of simplicity and unsophisticated, uncomplicated fun. Let’s all give our iphone, blackberry, facebook, twitter, powerbook, ipad, kindle hands a break.
Now unplug and go outside. If it is raining, invest $1.75 in silly putty.
Have a safe and happy 4th of July holiday.
