DON'T WASTE MY TIME

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD ( 02-24-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I admit it, I can't stand soccer. You can sue me if you like, maybe it'll take your mind off all the other things you're already suing me for. For a one-nil slugfest I could invest, well, no one knows HOW long because the referee can add as much time as he likes to the end of the game to make up for players wasting time during the game. I've been to meetings at work where the exact same thing happens; there's one guy who asks a stupid question every single time and the person running the meeting spends 20 minutes answering it under the misplaced notion that "there are no stupid questions." To make matters worse, the guy who asked it even told us beforehand that, "I know this is a stupid question but..." and not one of us had the courtesy to agree with him. As a fitting punishment for that, the person running the meeting asks at the end if anyone has any more questions, and believe it or not, somebody does.

     Anyway, my spectator sport of choice is baseball, and people from other countries who love soccer never tire of telling me how long and boring the game is. They say, I know this is a stupid question, but why does the pitcher shake his head four or five times at the catcher before he throws the pitch he wants to throw anyway? And why does the hitter grab his collar, then his glove, then his bat, then his cap, then his hair, then his crotch before each swing? Then why does he step out of the batter's box three or four times, then grab all that stuff all over again when he stands back in it? And why are you allowed to foul off as many pitches as you want, shouldn't there be some kind of limit? And why does the pitcher keep throwing over to first base so often? I quickly concur that these are stupid questions, which is what I always say when I don't know the answer.

     The fact is that baseball hasn't gotten more boring over the years, it's just that our tolerance for boredom has drastically decreased. When did this start? With the invention of the telephone? Just after the invention of the horse but before the telephone, I had to ride over to your house to have a conversation that eventually ends in me asking to borrow some money, and even though you might rattle on about your Mom's lumbago, I stuck it out because it took me so long to get there, and I needed the money. A few decades later, I could just make three or four calls from my house, and eventually I could find somebody fairly liquid who's Mom didn't have lumbago, which sped the process up considerably. Then the car was invented, and if I didn't like where I was I could just leave. With a remote control in my hand I had command of the airwaves, and with the internet I had the world at my fingertips.

     And because everything has been made so easy for me, I now have no patience for anything. Modern living has turned me into an irascible museum piece. I don't even have the patience to look up the word "irascible," so I hope I spelled it right. The very things that are supposed to make my life easier are the worst offenders. "Automatic" devices automatically raise my blood pressure. Every time I drive my wife's car I have to adjust the  "automatic" seat. I press the button while the seat moves back a fraction of an inch every 15 minutes. Then I press recline button for another 20 minutes while precious life seeps from my body. The automatic lumbar support can go to hell in a handbasket.

     Texting is quite the time-saver. Instead of picking up the phone to call someone when you have something important to say, you can use the text function instead. You save a TON of time because you don't need to wait until you have something important to say (I asked my sister to change her name so you won't know who I'm talking about).

     "Easy-open" packaging, makes life easier, unless you kill yourself trying to open it. I end up "opening" it even MORE "easy" with this knife I have that's really a borderline machete. It's known in my house as "the sharpest knife in the drawer." It's not like the ones gourmet chefs use, which they have to sharpen before they cut anything with. Mine comes right out of the drawer and cuts me on the way out. And that actually does save me the time of doing it myself. 

     In the interest of fairness, I think this column has wasted enough of both our time. But before we go, does anyone have any questions?