COMMENTARY: Loss Of Simpler Times Alarming

My smoke alarm hates me.

So does the kitchen light switch, the rotating part of the microwave and my doorbell. My washer and dryer used to hate me, but we got rid of them. Now it’s just the new dryer that hates me. Or just wants to mess with me. I can’t tell for sure. You know dryers. Stoic. Very dry wit.

Don’t get me started on the garbage disposal. And I’m getting funny looks from the DVR.

All right, I know what you’re saying: “Gary, Gary, Gary, perhaps it’s time to switch to decaf. Those things are inanimate objects. They don’t have emotions. They don’t love, they don’t hate, they don’t do anything.”

Which, I say, is exactly the point. They don’t do anything. Like, work.

OK, that’s not exactly true. My smoke alarm does something. It beeps.

Usually around 3 in the morning. Except I’m not sure exactly which one is beeping, so I’m up on a ladder trying to remember if “lefty loosey, righty tighty” applies to wallmounted appliances and, oh, trying not to plunge to a horrible and kind of embarrassing death. All this while trying to avoid waking the Lovely Mrs.

Smith, whichever of our progeny are still living at home and our suddenly sort-of-incontinent Pomeranian.

And before you get all up on your high horse about changing the batteries, you can just put ’er in neutral there, Lone Ranger. I’ve got the whole “change on Daylight Saving Sunday” thing handled. It’s just, for some reason, one of our smoke alarms has started acting like HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Next time I try to pull the whole thing out of the wall, I expect to hear, “I can’t let you do that, Dave.” Which is a little insulting, because, as much time as we’ve spent together late at night, you’d think it would recognize me.

It’s also started going through batteries like breath mints at a junior high dance. I’d chuck it and start over, but there appears to be electrical wiring involved. And that all but guarantees anything I do is either going to render an important safeguard for my family useless or make one of the other smoke alarms start beeping. And at 3 in the morning, I’m not sure which is worse.

Which brings me to the point of this rant: You can’t fix anything anymore.

We’ve already established that even if “you” could fi x anything anymore, “I” probably couldn’t. At least unless it involved beating the heck out of it with a hammer.

Which I can do. And have.

But Lord, even I should be able to handle something like changing the battery in a smoke alarm. Except a combination of over-engineering and cheap plastic have created a situation in which things are simultaneously so complex and yet so disposable that, whatever it is, it’s better just to throw it away.

Now for some of you, that’s no big deal. You were raised in a disposable culture. But I’m only a few years removed from people who made their own car parts and pulled their own teeth. There’s an appendix-removal story that still makes the rounds at family reunions you don’t want to hear on a full stomach. So the idea of calling someone to make that mean, bad smoke alarm quit going “beep, beep, beep” runs contra to the very fiber of my rural Southwest Oklahoma soul.

And the idea of having to pay what sure-enough electricians charge for coming out to your house and keeping you from going all Mark McGwire on the oft ending smoke alarm with your handy dandy Louisville Slugger/ smoke alarm siren adjuster runs contra to any hope you might have of putting your kids through college or actually retiring.

It’s not just the smoke alarm. The light has burned out in the microwave. So now I can’t tell exactly how bad it looks in there after the progeny blew up some pizza rolls. Before we left on vacation. And I can’t replace the light because, frankly, I don’t know where it is. But I’m pretty sure getting to it involves cutting in from the ceiling.

The dryer is a new “energy efficient” model.

Apparently, that means that, at various times, it just decides your clothes are dry enough and quits.

Which I suppose I’m all right with. I mean, I’m still pretty impressed my Thermos knows to keep hot things hot and cold things cold.

I guess I really can’t complain. Those of us who long for the good old days when things were simple seem to overlook stuft like the Cold War, polio and three whole television channels. But there are times when it all gets to be too much and I’d like to build a Yurt in the back yard and heat it with a wood stove.

If I could just get that fancy new lighter to work.

GARY SMITH IS A RECOVERING JOURNALIST LIVING IN ROGERS.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/10/2013

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