That's how I felt when my wife and I went to Best Buy tonight. Our mission was simple: to buy a new wall-mounted telephone containing digital answering capabilities.
But apparently because so many people are now contracting with local phone providers for multiple mailboxes, only a handful of the models on hand actually had answering capabilities built-in. Here I'd thought we were cutting edge. But the tide of technology had obviously passed us by!
My wife then suggested that we take a walk through the appliance department. Since our microwave oven dates back to the Reagan Administration and our refrigerator came with the house in which we live, built sixteen years ago, I agreed. There, among the stoves and washing machines, I realized what a cave man I truly am!
We came upon a range, the oven of which doubles as a refrigerator. That way, busy commuters can keep cold items refrigerated until a timer kicks the oven on. That seemed practical to me, even though a little extravagant. (Especially extravagant for me since I "commute" down two flights of stairs to my basement office each day.)
But what really blew me away was the tall stainless steel refrigerator/freezer with the television set in the door! The little descriptive blurb attached to the unit touted its supposed practicality, saying that it allows people to save counter space. (Sheesh! I don't even have a TV set on my counter, leaving me several permutations behind the advance of suburban America!) The blurb also explained that you can hook your refrigerator to cable or to a DVD player in another part of the house.
Just imagine, with that little beauty, while you get popcorn or drinks from the kitchen, you won't have to miss an action-packed minute of the latest Jackie Chan thriller, otherwise playing in the main theater: your family room. Or, after a hard day at work, you can simply yank a gallon of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Mocha out of the freezer and barely moving a muscle, plop down on your kitchen floor to watch exercise videos.
As we drove home, I fantasized about some future archeologists on a dig in suburban North America, coming to a find more impressive than Pompeii: The ruins of a massive housing development filled with overweight people, gazing at their refrigerators.
Conveniences are wonderful. But is there a point when we say, "Too much is too much"? I think that the TV in the refrigerator may be that point for me.
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