It’s the twenty-first
century. Not a headline, I know, but the world is wildly new and—at the same
time—endlessly the same.
Part of the newness is
that our phones follow us around in our pants. Satellites beam endless cute cat
videos straight into our back pockets. It’s like a new day has dawned in our
pants controlled by cats and their god.
And a lot hasn’t
changed—not one small bit: cats
and dogs still fight, the wind still blows, and sand still gets in the cracks.
At
our house it’s more and more and more about telecommuting and “the conference
call.”
Why
go all the way to Greece just to have a bunch of Monty Python style protestors
who jump on public transportation to travel downtown to throw Molotov Cocktails
at government buildings AND YOUR HOTEL, when you can sit at home and be invaded
by goats? It’s a great question for a great twenty-first century.
At
one point in my husband’s career, when people asked me what he did for a
living, I would say, “He tapes receipts to paper.” That’s what I saw him do after he traveled to the ends of
the earth to help foreign governments get the computers going, to send the
bills, to charge the people, for having the phones in their back pockets
downloading cat videos.
He
stays home a little more now and telecommutes. This is a method of doing
business that requires a home office, headsets, and the finger point. The
headsets let him talk to foreign geeks in ancient Babylonia letter-speak via
satellites. The finger point is to shut me up when I come in to request his
help putting out the grease fire in the kitchen.
“Sherwood,
the flames are taller than—”
He
twirled in his office chair, stabbed one finger at the general direction of my
voice while saying, “That will never work with the QPTTS-R49-7TMMR.” He pointed repeatedly to the headsets
on his head with one finger as he spun away from me in his office chair. He
returned to tapping wildly on his keyboard. The conference call went on.
The
kitchen burned down. NO. I’M
KIDDING. But it’s a lot like that.
Yesterday,
my husband was on a conference call when our three goats busted into his office
and started snorting around looking for goat nibbles. I saw them wander in and
went to help. Sherwood the husband spun around in his chair attempting to stab
a manly finger at the goats. Tramp the ram sniffed his finger. The conference
call went on. Tramp started to sample paper, pencils, wires, headsets, and electrical
outlets.
I closed the door—softly.
It’s
all new, business transacted around an entire planet through air and space. And
it’s all old; goats will still go anywhere, trying to eat everything.
Linda
(Call Me) Zern
