It All Comes Too Fast

I know, I know: Too much hand-wringing and too much angst here lately. Should I have tipped him? This guy, that guy, the other guy?

Probably yes to all.

I tip all the time now, and have been tipping since my honorary kid from New York City came into my life. I wince at the memory of all those times 'before' when flowers were delivered me and I didn't know enough to reach into my pocket for the dollar.

But "shoulda coulda woulda" huh? These days everyone uses that phrase, right before they say, “Don’t worry about it, What’s done is done, You did what you did" etc. It’s as though we no longer wish ever to look back and question our deeds or our motives. Kind of American of us if you’ll pardon my saying so.

Maybe we’re this way because we’ve been conditioned by years of listening to the newscasters, with their “And now this!”  “And now this!” Neil Postman called it the 'the amputated presence tense of television'. There IS no past, and there’s very little future  - unless they're trying to scare us to death with stories like “Is YOUR refrigerator emitting deadly fumes? Details at 11" - in which case there is a future involving doom.

Mostly on TV it’s just that big wide sky of a Present Tense where this and this arrives like “incoming” in a war.

Sometimes you feel like Lucy on the assembly line, struggling every minute of the day to keep up with what’s coming at you.

And here's that comic genius now, and above Laverne & Shirley, Lucy and Ethel's heirs in a way, who were wised up enough to at least occasionally daydream at work. (And there's one big fat generational division right there!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnbNcQlzV-4]