When ballet class is over, my daughters call my wireless — but I don’t answer, because I don’t have or want one.
I’m not saying I long for the old rotary-dial dinosaurs of the 60s or the privacy of booths in days of yore. I just happen to think this current cell phone craze will pass and suffer the fate of the Sony Betamax and New Coke.
I know that phones today can make movies, take dictation, sing songs and connect to the Internet, but that is so 27 seconds ago.
I’m waiting for the one-size-fits-all, invisible, voice-activated, never-needs-ironing mechanism with a lifetime guarantee, that can read my thoughts, hit for power and average, fold my laundry, mow my lawn and invest in on-site, off-shore, no-risk, ecologically-sound energy futures that reap modestly huge profits while simultaneously paying my fair share of taxes with a little left over to subsidize cancer research, world hunger and my daughters’ ballet school.
I have two reasons for putting my girls through such a throwback program as ballet, besides the fact that they can’t hit a curve ball. For one, I revere the philosophy of Dunbarism, which was popularized in the novel by Joseph Heller in “Catch 22,” the story of a WWII bombardier named Yossarian who thought everyone was trying to kill him, turning him into a bundle of fearful nervousness.
Dunbar, unlike Yossarian, accepted that death came to everyone, and committed himself to a practice of life extension, the theory of which began with the cultivation of boredom.
So while Yossarian despised the moronic, laconic and gung-ho soldiers in the company they were forced to endure, “Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it.” Dunbarism embraces and even celebrates the innocuous tediousness of life which makes it last longer, because, “What else is there?”
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