Day: July 26, 2017

Obsolescence

Fandango24 Comments

IMG_2438

“What’s that, Daddy?” the eight-year-old boy, pointing to something on the wall, asked his father?

“That’s a pay phone, son,” the father explained.

“What’s it for?”

“It’s for making telephone calls.”

“What’s a telephone call?” the boy asked.

His father laughed. “It’s a device people once used to talk to other people who were somewhere else. You would put money in it to call and speak to them. They could listen to what you said and you could hear them talk.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but that was before text messaging and Twitter made voice telephones obsolete.”

For Friday Fictioneers.

Take Tea and See

Fandango18 Comments

When I saw today’s WordPress one-word prompt, “tea,” it triggered some unpleasant memories. You see, I am not a big fan of tea. I blame my mother for that.

Tea was her version of chicken soup. She always made me drink tea whenever I was not feeling well. It didn’t matter if I had a cold, a stomach ache, sprained my ankle, or fell off my bike. Tea, she thought, was the answer to whatever ails you. In her effort to ease my suffering, she forced me to drink tea.

Sure, she would sweeten it up with a spoonful of honey in order to make the unpalatable slightly more palatable. It didn’t help. And to top it off, I don’t ever remember feeling better after drinking tea.

To this day, even the aroma of tea causes me to recall feeling of being sick or injured and having to drink what I now consider to be vile stuff. The association between tea and illness has been imprinted on me like some sort of tattoo that I can’t eradicate.

Thanks a lot, Mom.

One-Liner Wednesday — The Toilet Assumption

Fandango10 Comments

Aldous Huxley smoking, circa 1946

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capability for taking things for granted.”

When I read this quote, just one of many profound thoughts from Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, I thought of one thing that most of us take for granted: toilets.

Yes, toilets. We all have them. There are three of them in our house alone and each one gets plenty of use multiple times a day.

Think about it. You feel the need to use the toilet, you take care of your business, and once all the paperwork is done, you flush. Poof, all that nastiness is gone. It’s magic.

But where did it go? Who knows? Who cares? Outta sight, outta mind, right?

That’s why Huxley’s words about taking things for granted reminded of a book I read in college, Philip Slater’s 1970 book, The Pursuit of Loneliness. 

Slater’s book was required reading for an introductory economics course I was taking. I don’t remember much from the book except for what Slater called “the Toilet Assumption.”

According to Slater, “Our ideas about institutionalizing the aged, psychotic, retarded, and infirm are based on a pattern of thought that we might call the Toilet Assumption — the notion that unwanted matter, unwanted difficulties, unwanted complexities, and obstacles will disappear if they’re removed from our immediate field of vision.”

The Toilet Assumption, in essence, is based on the belief that social unpleasantness, once flushed out of sight, ceases to exist. This, according to Slater, is central to American culture.

So the next time you go to the toilet to accommodate your “social unpleasantness” and to eliminate your “unwanted matter,” remember that you should not take that remarkable, flushable toilet for granted.

After all, it is removing all that crap from your immediate field of vision.

This post was written for today’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt from Linda G. Hill.