April 26, 2006
My Appeal
to Science: The Ctrl/Alt/Delete Button for My Life
One of the
more frequently played commercials at the moment is the one about
(company) making our interactions with robots more natural and
acceptable to the public. That’s nice and all, but not being the type
to get overly excited about my interactions with something that can’t
hug me, I have a better challenge for our scientists.
To use my
favorite science word, I hypothesize that the brilliant minds who
came up with the control/alt/delete option on our computers can also
make one of these for my life! Sure, it would be a challenge, but
imagine the rewards they would reap! It would be better than the cloned
sheep! It would make more money than any bird flu vaccination.
Besides,
how fun would the experiments be? I’d certainly volunteer to be a test
subject, as long as I was the only one at my company allowed to
participate. After all, this would give me an edge that goes above and
beyond any energy drink, college degree or promotion could!
The whole
thing would work a little like TIVO, I guess. I could look back at my
most recent statement or action, and simply stop myself right before I
say or do them with my Control/Alt/Delete button. The conversation
would start over after a brief period of rest, and I’d be much better
off.
To prove
it, I spent one day tracking the things I did where this handy-dandy
invention could have altered the course of my future. And this is just
one day!
-
Impulse Buying.
We’ve all been there. It even has a cool name from psychology
called “buyer’s remorse.” But if only I could Control/Alt/Delete
the fact that I had to buy fresh flowers for my house, knowing full
well that I’m going to be out of town for the next five days, I
could’ve instead put $25 in my kid’s college fund. According to
your financial planner, that probably would have been $5,000 by the
time she’s 18. What was I thinking?
-
Sharing my Real
Feelings at a Meeting. How did that slip out? I didn’t really mean
to say that my co-worker was loud and obnoxious and that I wasn’t
sure if I could stand one more meeting with him. Just like Austin
Powers, I’ve lost my inner monologue! It doesn’t happen often, but
man, if I had a Control/Alt/Delete button on my mouth, nobody would
think of me as a witch come tomorrow.
-
Watching Jeopardy.
Bottom line: Always makes me feel stupid, and who needs help in that
category? Sadly, this will be on my list again tomorrow, too,
because I live under the illusion that I’ll remember some of what’s
on the show and impress my family at next year’s Trivial Pursuit
Showdown after Thanksgiving Dinner.
-
Volunteering to do
the Grocery Shopping. This is the one chore I absolutely cannot
stand, but once my husband has done it five, six, 20 times in a row,
I get a guilt complex. What would “21 times” have really have
hurt? Instead, I spent more than an hour doing what probably should
have taken 10 minutes because instead of focusing on the aisle
signs, I wandered around contemplating my big meeting mistake
instead. That Control/Alt/Delete would have taken two things off
this list! Instead, I went back to the milk and eggs aisle four
times.
-
Convincing Myself
it Really Could Wait ‘til Tomorrow. I’ll be up at 4:30 a.m. to make
up for that. Don’t lie – you’ve been there!
-
Getting Sucked into
Reading Product Reviews That I Know Are Crap. I’d be amiss if I
didn’t have at least one mention of wasted time on the Internet. We
need a baby gate and I actually read all 56 comments on the Babies R
Us web site. The problem? I know fully well that tons of those
things are placed by marketers and other employees of the
manufacturer under disguise names. I am not going to share how I
know this – but I do. This colossal waste of time wasn’t even fun.
Heck, I could have been tackling the project that’s the subject of
number five instead!
Here’s
hoping that you made it through this column without committing your own
version of Control/Alt/Delete, and that somewhere, some day, a scientist
agrees with me and gets to work!
I would
close with one of my favorite standard lines, which is “Cheers,” but I’m
pretty sure that means I’d also need to Control/Alt/Delete having had an
alcoholic drink on a work night, and I’ve a feeling that more than six
incidents per day might make the whole system crash.
© 2006 North Star Writers
Group. May not be republished without permission.
Click here to talk to our writers and
editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.
To e-mail feedback about this column,
click here. If you enjoy this writer's
work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry
it.
This
is Column # CD13.
Request permission to publish here.
|
|
|