Just for balance

Not too long ago I was training a newly hired kid just out of college how to do my job posting news to a website. In the course of the evening he intimated and all but said he was surprised to see someone “um, your age” who was computer literate. I looked at him silently for a moment with mock shock showing on my face. Then very carefully and slowly so the message came through loud and clear, I said, “Who do you think invented them?”

But that was just background. Yesterday I went to a Home Depot to buy a couple of gardening tools and a watering can. When I couldn’t find one, I asked the young lady working there where I might find a watering can. “What’s that?” she asked. This woman works in the gardening department, is there to assist customers and had no clue what a watering can is. I described one. Think right now, if you had to describe something as common and universal as a watering can, could you do it clearly? After my bumbled description, I mean watering cans are a given, something you automatically know what it is without ever in your life having to actually describe one, she still didn’t know and actually had to call someone. Here’s how important watering cans are these days. They were on the third shelf up, yes, I had to climb shelves (past maybe 10 different kinds of hose reels) to get at them, and neither of these young, spry, (don’t you just love the word “spry”?) people could take the time to come with me. Then I had to use one of the tools in my hand to reach the can I wanted and drag it to where I could grab it. There was so much dust on it, it must have been there since the place opened. And then it cost $25. I should have charged them an unstocking fee.

Looking at the generation gap from the other side, now, I am a little dismayed. These people are going to take over the world someday? I suppose living in the sub arctic a kid can grow up without ever seeing a watering can, but wow wasn’t there one in Mr. Macgregor’s garden? In the Child’s Garden of Verses? Somewhere in a book?

Now happily at home with my gold-plated hard-fought-for watering can, I actually have something to water.

Last week I bought some plants including a lilac bush. (I may have bought the wrong kind. A woman at work who knows about these things told me there is only one kind the moose won’t eat.) But then I put on my facebook page that I had bought a lilac bush. Despite all the new ads that say use of the word is wrong, I looked at that sentence on line and decided hmmm that looks awfully gay. So I added that I had also bought a Jeep. Just for balance you know. And I did. but, it was all part of a master plan.

A year ago when gasoline prices were up around $4.50, I got the idea that it might be smart to buy one of the new efficient hybrids for my 80-mile commute, and then a small pickup or Jeep or something to use on weekends for bush trips and hauling my trailer and that sort of thing. So a little more than a week ago I had some extra time in Anchorage and wandered into the Honda dealer. (Why Honda is another story.) Sooooo, Now I own a Honda Insight which gets me to work at an average 47 miles per gallon, and a Jeep which mostly sits in the yard anxiously waiting for a good Bush adventure.

And for proof just look at the picture.... that is my new lilac bush along with my new (actually used) Jeep just for the balance of it all.