Crazy!

I know now just how cool it was to sit on the living room floor at the neighbours' house with my friend and watch television. Television, which most of us now don't bother with because there are better media to receive our delights, was in the day some miracle we could hardly witness without tears of joy. But even then I had no idea just how cool it was to live in such a miraculous time.

A huge plastic veneer wood cabinet with a tiny little glass screen in it showed us pictures in varying shades of gray, and from the fuzzy fabric on one side came from a tinny speaker, sound, like Patsy Cline. I could, at this moment, weep for joy. We are blessed, even moreso than then as we sat on plastic wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room of a house electrified. Thanks to hygiene and medicine available to my family but unknown to my Grandparent's age, I survived a major epidemic that carried off children by the score in my little town; and I could sit and watch, in the darkness of the land, a woman singing, from who knew where, right in the room warm and comfortable where I was. My gratitude is unbounded when I think a moment about the joys of Modernity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Patsy Cline...