#455 Dollars and Sense

Sometimes it’s hard to keep up. And as I get older it seems the pace or change is quicker than ever. I expect change. Change is the only constant in life, cause let’s face it, even death and taxes have changed over the years. But still, the rapidity with which things change today makes me wish I was walking to school uphill both ways like my parents did. A lady at a meeting I was at was speaking of an even older lady. She wanted to describe the lady as feisty, I guess, so she said the lady had snap in her garters. There was a definite age line in the room that could be defined by the knowledge among the members of what a garter was. And why describing a garter as having snap in it could be indicative of meaning in a metaphorical way. Garters are still sold, even with the advent of knitted sock elasticity and other textile triumphs. They even sell an item called a shirt garter, which is different than a sleeve garter in that you hook one end of it to your shirttails and the other end of it to your socks. It holds your shirt in and your socks up. No wrinkles around the waist and no wrinkles around your ankles. The stick to place up your rear is sold separately. Speaking of change. Right now I’m typing this essay on a laptop. But I’m having a little difficulty reconciling this process with the word typing. As there is no type present, particularly at the end of the metal arms that used to slam against platen and paper. Platen. There’s a word whose time is done. I wonder when Webster will discard it from the next edition. Ah change. And that most ubiquitous of modern realities, change back. Remember when banks trained us to use ATMs? Got us, in fact, to depend on them. Then they got all arrogant when they had us addicted and started charging us ATM fees. Well the wheel of commerce has turned. Now the banks are competing again. Free checking isn’t enough. So they’re offering free ATMs anywhere any time. Funny how they do that. Offer something free because it saved them all the cumbersome costs of hiring personnel and dealing with long lines during the few hours the banks were open. Self-service meant fewer labor costs for them. Then create a new revenue source by taking it away. And then recondition us to pay for what should be free. And then bring back the freeness as if they’re so generous. Condition us to expect less and then deliver more. Even though more should have been the baseline. Like this investment counselor I heard. He said the prognosticators were wrong. Last year they were predicting oil prices to be a hundred dollars a barrel. The reality, he said, is oil prices are now at 60. Um, sixty still seems like a lot more than forty. And sixty still caught the major US car manufacturers with their pants down again. When will they learn? Change is the only constant. And the only change-back the consumer really wants is at the pump.
America, ya gotta love it