Snooze You!

People think I don’t like technology. That’s sort of true. I love AOL and I only learned to use the DVD player a couple of months ago. The thing is, nobody ever asks me why.

Technology changes the way people think. My first car had an AM radio with no tape deck. (Fine, brat. We’ll all wait while you wiki “tape deck”.) Long drives were more boring than you could survive.

My first very-own TV was black and white. Nuff said.

The ideological quantum leap was the VCR. You can’t imagine what it was like before that. We had to be home in time to see our favorite shows, and also had to watch all the commercials. Brand loyalty back then was a matter of personality, like a commodity-based Rorschach test.

My first cell phone was the size of a shoe, and not even one of my shoes. It was the size of one of Robert’s shoes, which means slightly smaller than a loveseat. It was too big for a pocket so I didn't bring it everywhere, which defeated the purpose.

But the biggest change in the way people think came after the invention of the snooze button. That’s when the Age of Entitlement began.

Yes, really.

All of a sudden, no one had to keep their word.

You decided to set the alarm, and selected the time. You could have set it for ten minutes later, but did you? Noooo.

You set it for when you needed to get up. Then you changed your mind. You hit the snooze, because it was there.

Responsibility hinged on convenience rather than commitment.

“What’s ten more minutes?” That becomes rhetorical when you are most vulnerable.

I’ll tell you what ten more minutes is. Ten more minutes is skipping breakfast and being irritable all day. Ten more minutes means driving like an asshole so you won’t be late.

Aha! You’re starting to get it. You see how people got meaner and less polite. (Two separate things, I’ll do a post on that later.) You see where gridlock comes from, not to mention road rage.

I figured all this out while dealing with the consequences of having hit the snooze button this morning. So sue me or snooze me, I’m going back to bed.