Yo, Tech Answer Guy,
As I get older, I find myself starting to see what really matters in life, which, as it turns out, isn’t very much.
I (or, rather, my six year-old backside) remember(s) how angry my mother used to get when I pulled the robo-cat’s tail so I could hear it go, “Me-ow! Me-ow, I say! Me-ow!” It’s not that it was created with a pain circuit, so mom really needed to lighten up. I’d like to think that now, over 50 years later, my mother wouldn’t give those incidents (yes, there was more than one – when you’ve got a good thing going…) a second thought. But, of course, she’s in the final throes of dementia, so she probably doesn’t have second thoughts about anything these days. Or, for that matter, first thoughts.
Then, there was the time Melissa-Sue Fung-Gooderingham accused me of flirting with her boyfriend Bobby-Joe Slash-Mannheim on Farcebook. Okay, maybe I was. A little. I was 14! Flirting was my default position! Anyway, we’ve both had multiple husbands since then and nobody uses Farcebook any more. I hardly ever think of those days, and never with the emotions I used to feel; I suspect Melissa-Sue feels the same.
Then, there was my first divorce (the less said about the marriage, the). Things were going well until we came to the issue of the custody of Dexter Dumont, our only vacuubot. Don’t judge – he was a bigger part of the family than my mother-in-law! Okay, judge a little – looking back at it now, I can’t really understand how we let the proceedings drag on for five years over a piece of plastic and silicon that obsolesced five minutes after the ink dried on the divorce papers.
It’s not just that so much of what I have experienced in my life seems trivial to me now. Oh, Jesus Begesus, there is that. However, even more than that, I realize that the things that I am most passionate about now will probably mean very little to me 60 years from now. (What? A couple of technological advances and some clean living and it could happen.)
Is this the wisdom that they say comes with age?
Sincerely,
Ellen-Terry McRenderer-Falstaff from Toy Town
Yo, ET,
You so asked the wrong person!
Yo, Tech Answer Guy,
My pet oompa loompas have started gnawing the heads off my daughters’ Barbet (yes, Schroeder – they’ve been watching European art house films since they could say “pretentious”) dolls and playing with them as if they were balls of yarn even though they don’t have a lot of
[Whoa! Whoa – I gotta stop you right there! Tech Answer Guy! Even I know that wasn’t the right answer, and my emotional IQ is measured in irrational numbers! You’re off the case! Oh, seriously? Go ahead, question my decision. I’ve been inspired to try new slapping techniques ever since I watched a Three Stooges marathon the other night! What? Not so authority questiony now, are you? Amritsar, take over from the big guy. Editrix-in-Chief Brenda Brundtland-Govanni]
Happy to, Brenda.
Hey, Babe,
Fifty seems to be a turning point for most people. One of three things happen at this point: some people become so disenchanted with their lives that they embrace bitterness as a primary lifestyle. These people are known as “conservatives.” Other people realize that time dims our passions, which often leads them to question the value of the whole passion thing. These people tend to be known as “alcoholics.” Then, there are people who prefer not to analyze their lives in such detail. They are part of a small group known as “happy.” It sounds like you fall into the second category.
The good thing is that self-knowledge need not be a burden. Look at it this way: not sweating the small stuff puts you halfway to nirvana. All you have to do is learn not to sweat the big stuff, and you will have arrived at what enlightened mystics have been trying to achieve for millennia! Granted, not sweating the big stuff is the hard half of the journey. But, you could have another 60 years to make it. Good luck!
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service’s sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: Vacuubots are not pets. Vacuubots clean messes. Pets make messes. To understand this distinction, see, for example, Bandicoot, Crash, et al, “Acting Out in Your Sandal, Sneaker of Galosh: Cats, Dogs and Vacuubots, A Comparative Study” in The Journal of Domesticated Aggressiveness (V12, I356).