I’m driving with this Canadian lady heading for “cottage country” in Northern Ontario. The cell phone towers get spaced out up there so you can sometimes lose cell phone service between towers. We’re going 60mph on the highway, and the lady starts to rail. “This is so irritating. I paid $150 dollars for this phone – the very latest model – and here I am, driving along, and the damned thing is useless.” Understand that at highway speed, we’re in range of the next tower in about 2 minutes.
Two minutes without phone contact, and the lady is freaking. I remember a time in Canada when to make a phone call from your car on the highway, you had to wait for one of those roadside service stations, find a working pay phone, get the right amount of coins, and then hope the person you were calling was at home. This lady is sitting in her air-conditioned minivan, and complaining because she can’t call somebody for 2 minutes.
And for what? To find out whether Serena won the tennis match, or whether it’s raining in Toronto?
Mankind is evolving all right, and all around the world, not just Canada, we have evolved into a mob of whining, complaining, disgruntled people. We have been inundated for so long by so much merchandise and so many systems designed to make our life “better” that we have become spoiled rotten.
We expect everything to work, and work fast, and work continuously. We expect everything to start on time and arrive on time. We expect everything to be perfect, so when the frozen pizza is not the best, the ensuing rage is such that we have to resort to Eno’s to calm the upset stomach.
One would think that Caribbean people, known for our more relaxed approach to life, would not be so susceptible to these variances but in fact we are some of the worst offenders.
The Tradewinds Trini drummer Clive Rosteing (his last name is German; don’t ask me how a black Trini has a German name; he’s a Trini) has a mania for technology. When I was in Cayman, we lived about 10 minutes apart, but Clive would go nuts if he couldn’t get me on the phone. He would call me up the next day, still irritated from the day before. “I was trying to get hold of you yesterday.” I’m hesitant. “Well, I was out.” Clive is ready for me. “I figured that, so I tried your cell phone.
“It rang about 10 times; no answer. What’s going on?” I stayed calm. “What’s going on is that I turned off my cell phone.” Clive exploded. “What? You have a cell phone and you turned it off? What’s wrong with you?” Martins exploded.
“Listen, banna. It’s my cell phone. I bought it. I pay the bill. If I feel to turn it off, I turn it off. Call me later. If it’s something all that urgent get in your blasted car, drive to my house and leave a message; it’s 10 minutes away.” No use; Clive is spoiled rotten.
Next time we’re rehearsing he brackles Harry Cupid, our percussionist, who’s always on the phone, and hits him with, “Would you believe Marts (that’s his name for me) has a cell phone and turns it off?” Cupid pretends to be shocked, but he’s like me: if you ring his cell phone 10 times he might answer it once, and while he has voice mail he never checks it. Clive almost has a stroke dealing with Cupid’s telephone antics; the Trini is spoiled rotten.
Another one is the computer. I blame the computer marketing folks for this one, because one of their main selling points is, of course, speed, so Lord help you if somebody comes to your house, and needs to use your computer, and it’s not operating at warp speed. By that, I mean, instead of taking 10 seconds to get you on the web, your computer takes 20.
“Boy, this thing is so slow.” Reflect that 20 years ago if you needed to find out the origins of the Crimean War, you would have to go the library, assuming one was within reach, put your name on a list to reserve the book, and go back once a week to check to see if it was in.
With Google you’re there in two minutes, but your techno fanatic is having conniptions because your computer, in his words, is like molasses.
Everywhere you look, we’re spoiled: to clean stuff my mother used a cake of Sunlight soap and a bit of bleach; nowadays Bounty has 22 different cleaners and our housewives fret if they don’t have one of each. In today’s kitchen, we have mixer, blender, chopper, percolator, food processor, and grinder – my mother had a knife and a hand grater. I’m building a wood table.
I’m using a jig saw, a circular saw, an electric plane, a belt sander, an orbital sander, a router, and an electric drill; there was a time when a carpenter would come with a hand saw, a hand plane, two chisels and a square and build a whole house.
The most amusing aspect of this is that in the midst of all these aids to living – we even have a battery-operated gizmo now that stirs the pot for you – how much we complain about the smallest setback. We’ve become so accustomed to all this gear; we can’t live if a piece isn’t working or a service gets interrupted.
When Hurricane Ivan destroyed Cayman, a friend of mine and his two daughters were bunking with me for about a week. With water cut off we had to dip from the cistern, so to conserve supply the flush toilet rule became, “Flush only for pee.” The young ladies were aghast. “Don’t flush for pee? That’s disgusting. No way we’re doing that.”
In a way you can’t blame them. They grew up in a time where excess is the norm.
Like most people, like Clive with the cell phone and the lady with the 22 items to clean house, and me with my electric tools, we’re spoiled.
