A Vacation Away From Glowing Screens and Incessant Noises

No alarms and no surprises, no alarms and no surprises; silence--Radiohead.  

ESPN: Lebron, we're in
talks with the new pope
to get you canonized,
so will you now sign
our basketballs? 

As I write this entry, my itunes randomly played this classic 90s song.  ESPN is on in the background blathering on about another March Madness upset and the Miami Heat winning 25 games in a row (part of their godification of all things Lebron James).  My children are exhaustively begging for a snack before bedtime, and an overhead light is buzzing some kind of electronic white-noise dubstep tune.

SHUT UP!

Please, no more alarms, no beeps, no buzzes, no glowing screens begging to be viewed, no crying, no sonic wavelengths conflicting for my attention.  Silencio. I don't want to spend my spring break surrounded by devices making me more frazzled, more insular, more robotic.

Some have interpreted the meaning of Radiohead's song as longing for death; perhaps via suicide.  But I always understood it as a longing to get away from the bombardment of life's distractions.  A desire to go to the woods and live deliberately.  To escape the ADHD status updates and LED glow of a million pieces of electronica.

I don't know if this farming looks like fun, but it should
probably be required that every human experience it.  

I wouldn't mind an EMP bomb going off in my life.  A forced thrust into the ancient world of dependence on earth, instead of dependence on technology.  Technology always lets me down.  Give me my acoustic guitar over my electric. A good whiteboard and markers over a document camera.  Sure, technology makes life easier at times, but it also makes us dependent on it.  I don't even know if I own a dictionary anymore, instead relying on all these digital spellchecks. And frankly, that scares me.

I make my students write multi-page scenarios about survival after teaching Lord of the Flies.  We talk about what necessities we would need, what problems different environments would present, what problems our own psyches would cause...and yet, almost all the students incorporate some kind of "found" technology that saves them from nature's calamities.

Because our phone's reliability has replaced a trusted friend.  Who needs companionship or collaborative teamwork when you can find instant answers and gratification online?

How could anyone kill Piggy on an island
that looks anything close to this?  

At one point a student asked me, "Mr. Plumb what would you do if you were stranded on a tropical island by yourself for a month?"

Are you kidding me? No students? No kids? No wife? No cell phones, bosses, bills, distractions, responsibilities, duties, stresses, conveniences, cars?

"I'd have the most amazing vacation of all time. It would probably add ten years to my life, that is, if I survived the month. I think I would enjoy every minute of that scenario."

And they were dumbfounded. Because after a few days camping, they long for their X-boxes, phones, and digital updates.  We will never have a transcendental movement again in this nation.  We will never find ourselves in Walden Pond.  We have become slaves to technology.  Addicted to worthless and trivial updates and modifications to our existing items.

But isn't there already a backlash, you say?  What about the homeopathic, anti-GMO, organic, hipster movement that celebrates buying local and used, and lessening their carbon footprint?  Aren't they already rebelling against technology?  And I'd reply, "Have you been to Portland recently?  Those people "saving the earth" are mind-numbingly absorbed by their touch screen devices.  Donating a goat to a family in Africa online, buying their Toms shoes while using Starbucks' free wi-fi, and all the while oblivious to their child who is kicking my chair to the timing of The Cave by Mumford & Sons.

Wake up people!  (Unless you are reading this blog on a portable device). The Harlem Shake is already old. Whatever you discover on the internet will be old in five days. There is no reward for discovering something before someone else. Create something yourself. Or put the device down and people watch again.  You'd be surprised how socially inept we have become in ten years.  Eye contact, alertness, "normal behavior," all have been replaced with narrow collisions by people starring at their devices. This is American culture. Red-eyed, inattentive, bland, pacified, clumsy...stoned.  We are stoned on technology.  And it's a real depressant, a real downer.

Or maybe I'm just Debbie Downer, and need a quiet vacation.

Supposedly, this sound chamber in Wisconsin, which is 99% dead to sound will drive you insane in 45 minutes.   

Phone Phobia Makes Me a Bad Friend.

Filthy, fat, Hobbitses, not coming to
my Precious's surprise party.  

I should have been a hobbit.  Really.  Not like a J.R. Tolkien hobbit, but like the guys who disappear from society and live in the forest and commune with nature and never have to interact with human beings.  It's infinitely easier to explain to a tree why you missed its 127th birthday, then why you missed your buddy's Super Bowl party.  I like people (most of the time) and I like parties and events, I just find, that when push comes to shove, I'd rather be sitting at home in the comfort of my recliner than in someone else's metal folding chair.

Remember the Tampico challenge?  Drink a
whole gallon in an hour without throwing up. 

And that makes me a crappy friend.  I'm sorry guys.  I wish I was more comfortable at your parties milling around with people whom I've met before but don't remember their names.  I enjoy food, but not when I'm eating appetizers on flimsy paper plates while standing up, and hoping nobody will bump into me causing me to splatter my *Tampico drink all over their furniture.  This usually never happens.  But I fear it may, someday.  And this fear, of nearly total strangers talking about the weather, and of spilling high fructose corn syrupy drinks onto old furniture, keeps me from ever enjoying my time at your house.  It's probably a disorder. 

Dude, it's just a pencil chair, I don't
know what your problem is; it's
perfectly comfortable.  

Thankfully, I don't have any friends with the uber white carpeting, and next to nothing is permitted in their house; from shoes to children to pet hair from your home.  "Oh, sorry, Chris, could I have you use this pet lint brush before coming inside, I have a high intolerance to pet dander."  To which I wish I could respond: "oh yeah, sure, but I might warn you that I have a high intolerance to anal retentiveness, so you might just send me home right now."  I'm not even sure why neat freaks invite people over to their house, other than to make the rest of us feel worse about our messy situations.  I'm not sure those type people are any better at friendship than I am. 

As bad as I am at friendship, I'm trying to change.  I'm getting older and my active years are wasting away.  There will be a time when I might not be able to swing 18 holes of golf, or sit in an uncomfortable chair for longer than 20 minutes, and that scares me.  I don't want to be anti-social.  I don't want to be the old man sitting in my bark-o-lounger cussing at Judge Judy, and ignoring the doorbell.

"...and the neckline will swoop in
a V-neck, but not too revealing...
are you still there?  Oh, and the
moon is sooo large tonight, you
should check it out!"  

And I think I've discovered my problem.  I have a phone phobia.  I hate phones.  I hate my cell phone.  I hate the ringing and the talking and the thinking of things to say and the trying to end the call so I can get back to doing the nothing I was doing before the phone call started.  This is my issue, not yours.  Most of the time, the communication isn't that bad.  But after 10 minutes, I start to panic.  The phone drops from my ear.  I start talking into it like a microphone.  Or I lay on the couch with it placed on my forehead, while I zone out with simple answers like "Yep," or "Uh huh" and the other person realizes I suck and they end the call.

I've tracked down where this disorder originated.  It was high school.  It was talking to girlfriends with their never ending problems and emotional breakdowns, and constant needs for reassuring and complements; and the listening, oh god, how I tired of their blabbering.  I like talking, conversation, even arguing when it is needed, but pointless chit-chat about the day, the weather, homework you're working on, or what design you want your homecoming dress to look like? Make it stop.  I DON'T CARE!  But I did back then.  I wanted to be a good boyfriend.  I should've just said, "Uh, sounds like you have stuff to work out, give me a call when you want to make out or something..." But I wasn't that kind of guy, so I sat and listened, and the constant whining noise damaged me in my core.  And I learned to hate the phone.  I wonder how telemarketers remain sane?

"Okay, I'll look at the...Holy Moses, the Moon is invading our atmosphere!"

But those days are long gone.  My wife recognizes my hatred of the phone and she keeps our digital conversations to a bare minimum.  It's one of our love languages.  Phone limitation love.  My family, as well, jokes about my phone disorder.  I often hear comments like, "Well, I'm hanging up now, cause I can tell the phone is on your forehead."  Yeah it is.  Even though nobody is blathering away about mundane events that have no life bearing anymore, I still treat the phone like it is only one minute away from another conversation about how large the moon looks tonight, and that scares me.  I don't care how large the moon looks.  I care about real things.  And real conversations.  And they don't happen on the phone.  They happen in real life, except when real life is huge gatherings with partial strangers with *Sunny Delight drinks, and ten babies crying in the other room.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm ready to take a chance again.  Ready to take my cell phone off mute, and ready to actually dial numbers and make plans to actually hang out, and go to Barry Manilow concerts.  I don't want to be a hobbit or a couch curmudgeon.  I want to be a real person, with real friends, that hang out and eat and drink and be merry.  And that can't happen on the internet, or on the phone, or at huge social parties, but only one-on-one.  So give me a call.  Or I'll give you a call.  Just try and keep the conversation under 10 minutes as old habits die hard.  And hopefully, you can forgive me for being the social pariah I turned myself into, and I'll forgive you for spilling *Hi-C on my rug ten years ago, when I last had a party at my house. 

*All drink names have been changed to protect the identity of the innocent.