This is a transcript of a narration; it is word for word. A.B.
I’m not as old as Brighid Wise, nor as well traveled or well read. Still, I’m 84 years old and I think I know something about life, at least life in the canyons, here. The doc says I have lung cancer and won’t be long watching the vultures circle, so I have to say my piece now, and I thank A.B. for putting my words on the internet.
I look at the world you young people are making, and I grieve for you. My God, you have everything in front of you, more food than is good for you, a doctor for every ache, and television screens of every kind, even on your telephone. I can remember Dick Tracey had a wrist communicator, but what he had was a toy compared to what I see my great grandkids have. No body that ever lived on earth has it better than you, but look what you make with it!
I turn on the television, and I can’t believe the delight people get from the sadness of others! You take family members from one family and stick them in another family, like taking ants from one hole and sticking them in another to watch them fight and struggle. There was a time children were punished for doing such things. Nobody knows better now.
And killing and death! It’s two thirds the news and two thirds the evening programs. I wonder how you keep straight in your head which is true and which is stories? Stony faced men decide who did it, who killed the pretty woman, who killed the little girl, who killed all those people. To look at it, you would think half your neighbors are killing the other half. In my life I’ve personally known three people who were murdered. Of all the people I’ve known, just three. Two were killed by alcohol: friends and family get drunk, play cards, bring up old grieves, and someone got a gun. Drink moderately. The third picked up a hitch-hiker in the city and resisted a robbery. Nobody made big salaries to solve those murders, no pale toadies sat in laboratories. I don’t think there were even fingerprints. That’s most of the killing folks do among themselves. The rest of it, most of the mornings in your life, is people working and keeping themselves together.
The government kills most of all, kills our people and people we know nothing about. I can’t say anything to that, except that it sets an example, like leaders always set an example, and it’s shameful, and no wonder the misery that follows.
A generation like yours that has been blessed with so many things should be happier! A person who took every pill they show on television would be dead in a day. I read in a National Geographic once about a market where primitives would go to buy a little stone idol when they were sick. There was a different little stone idol for any ailment you might have. I wondered how they might think those little pieces of stone would make them better, but sometimes they did, I guess. Now I see all the pills people take, to make them less sad, to make them thinner, younger, to make them sleep better. Little pills for any ailment you might have. I guess sometimes they work.
I learned somewhere in life that to be happier, do something for someone else. You’ll be surprised how happy you’ll be if you do some nice thing for someone else, maybe someone who needs a little help, or maybe just a pie. Bake someone a pie and see if you don’t feel happier. Want to be thinner? Give the pies away, don’t eat them. Want to sleep better? Get out and do some work during the day, and turn off that idiot box, nothing on there will help you sleep. Want to be younger? Ha ha, just wait!
On the television I see a real nice clean man telling me how to be better "connected" using his little gadget. When the great grandkids come around I never see their faces, which are buried in the little gadgets. Now, I always thought "connected" was when two or even more things were hooked together. These kids aren’t hooked to anyone, they’re connected to a gadget. In the old days when we wanted to be connected we sat at the table and talked at dinner. We went to church, we talked about the Lord and sang together, we talked about the problems and hopes and victories of the people we knew, and when we went home we had a sense of them as real folks, with real expressions on their faces that let you know when they were happy or sad or ashamed or grateful. You knew the smell of them, if they were sick or had been drinking. You knew what their kin said and how they were doing, and all those folks knew about you, about the new baby in the family, or about the fat deer hanging in the barn. If you really wanted to feel connected you put on a pot of beans and made coffee and you had folks come over on Sunday afternoon, or in the winter maybe even on a Saturday. The only gadget in front of anyone’s face was a harmonica or a fiddle, or an occasional shot of rye.
For all the noise and light, the things I don’t see advertised on the screen are the only things that really make people happy: work, prayer, family, and true friends.
The computer screen could show us such beautiful things. No home would be without fine art, without music from the masters of the symphony. Instead, you look at girls with no clothes, men with no manliness, and monkeys picking their butts. It would be like a wizard of old with a magic mirror that would show him anything in the world, but all he wants to do is watch the poor girl in the village change her corset. I must be senile, because it makes no sense to me. Or, I suppose it does, because after all the computer is a mirror, what you see in it is what you are.
So, I’ll soon be leaving this vale of tears, and I’ll miss my family for a little while, like they’ll miss me, but I’ll not shed a tear for the world you all have created. If I get to heaven and get a chance to talk to the Lord, I’ll mention what things are like down here. Perhaps He’ll shake things up, remind you all how good you have it. Maybe He already is, maybe you know the end is coming, and maybe that’s why you’re so unhappy, and why you study death.
Goodbye!
EM
