We have been without television for months. The cable company decided to “improve” service to provide bandwidth for options we don’t want.
All I want to watch is actor Pauley Perrette in her goth outfits drinking X-treme-size soft drinks and fiddling with forensic equipment on lunchtime NCIS reruns. Plus, of course, worthwhile shows at night where people use polysyllabic words.
Not that Ms. P’s vocabulary is short on syllables. The actress herself has a master’s in criminology. At least that’s what I read while spell-checking her name.
Before I took early retirement, I swore I would never watch daytime television. Vacuous passivity portends a downward slide. All the research confirms it. But I’m used to background noise with my sandwich.
The directions for connecting our clunker TV to this unasked-for improvement involved placing a box on top of the DVR and connecting some cables. Then sitting for 45 minutes in front of a blank screen while the TV talked to its mother.
Once an image appeared, I started punching the remote. The screen bleeped farewell. The call for assistance got an automated loop. We quit trying.
The last intelligent thing on the tube that stuck in my head was an air safety expert telling Frontline a wise thing. It’s been enough to occupy my macro thinking for months.
In the flight business, said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, “the absence of accidents doesn’t necessarily mean you’re safe. What you really have to look at are thousands of things that lead up to the accident in the first place.
“Human beings will make a lot of little mistakes that serve as a warning before a big mistake occurs — and a big consequence. So what it really means to be safe is to be focused on those little warning signs and catching them early. It’s only when we miss a bunch of those warning signs that we have a tragedy.”
Picture a numbed boomer slouching in a recliner. Snack bags and beer cans litter the floor. ESPN blares.
He’s trying to ignore little warning signs that might portend big personal consequences on, say, retirement savings, job security, mortgage payments, home repair costs, cardiovascular health.
Or take something as mundane as dental hygiene. If you don’t brush thoroughly, floss daily, get enough fluoride and calcium, and keep total body inflammation down, your teeth fall out.
One basic tooth implant costs $1,250 to $3,000, “but the total cost can escalate to $15,000 to $30,000 depending on location, complexity and the need for bone or gum restoration work,” say several dental Web sites.
Easier to take care of what nature gave you. Similar to old Ben Franklin’s “a penny saved is a penny earned.” Then hope your molars don’t go weird like one of mine did to the tune of $3K. That’s micro thinking.
Macro — big picture — involves the cumulative effects of tiny little mistakes large numbers of us make that have a big impact on everything and everyone.
Global degradation, ancient gripes that lead to wars, greed that crushes ordinary working folks, crumbled roads and bridges that cause accidents, education that fails to eradicate illiteracy. See how one’s mind drills down when you have time to think? All those syllables just float along their neural pathways.
Since the TV went blank, candlelit dinners in the dining room have increased. Discussions linger.
