Big thumbs, tiny heads

All right, I saw the movie Wall*E and it was cute. At some time in the far future, people have become fat blobs who are no longer able to stand up because their bones have become weak and useless. Everything is done for them: they no longer even speak to each other.

As I said, it was a cute movie, until I realized the day is fast approaching where we wake up and realize that Wall*E was wrong. We will become a species with huge thumbs, weak legs and teeny tiny little shrunken heads.

No! You protest. We are becoming a species with a useless pinky finger and big heads. Like the aliens. But, alas, this is not going to be the case.

There was a time where you would die if you didn’t know how to build a fire and boil water. And - don’t get me wrong - I’m glad that time has passed. Because during that time you were likely to die, period. We now have clean water, toilets that flush (Hallelujia!) and women have an alternative to dying during childbirth and leaving the husband alone to figure out what to do with the child/beast. (Praise be to all you women who want ‘natural’ childbirths, but you won’t see me doing something just because ‘people have done it for thousands of years’. Horse and buggy, anyone? Really, get a better argument.)

But here’s the downside: we are getting phenomenally stupid. When I was a kid, if my toy train broke, I flipped it upside down and looked at the three working parts to see which one was at fault. My son’s train set is remote controlled. Which is way cool. But I bet there are very few of you who could offer a better explanation for how it works than “the remote sends a signal through the air to the train and the train goes.”

On the upside, my son didn’t pay the money to buy all the parts of that train set - upwards of several hundred dollars, piece by piece. So he isn’t afraid to get out a screwdriver and take it apart to see what’s wrong. This is why kids are so much more tech savvy than their parents: No fear / no concept of money.

The same applies to the TV and all that goes with it. At least my son’s train set isn’t a video game and he does build his own tracks. He uses all five of his fingers to do that. And thank goodness, because I was about to be afraid he wasn’t getting enough exercise.

But, train sets and video games aside, we are getting stupider by the minute. I was elated when I learned to microwave a potato rather than bake it, but appalled when they invented soup that you didn’t have to add water to. Seriously? Oh gosh yes! Adding water just took soooo looong. And drinkable water is so hard to come by in the continental US.

I became concerned when my mother got a hot dog cooker. It’s like a toaster: you put in two dogs and two buns and then push the lever down. Five minutes later, voila! Up pops dinner. The contraption is the size of a bread machine. Seriously? You are going to devote that much counter space to a food you shouldn’t be eating anyway? If you have a machine for it, you’re eating too many hot dogs. Bet you can’t name three hot dog ingredients without vomiting. No, it’s fine, I’ll wait ‘til you get back from hugging the toilet . . .

But wait! There’s more! Screw the hot dog machine, because you can now buy your hot dogs prepackaged in a plastic sleeve and just pop them in the microwave. Thank god, because getting out the hot dogs, then getting out the buns, then pushing the button on the machine was just so taxing. If you’re out of breath, I’m just saying it’s maybe because you don’t do anything except push the buttons on your video games and your diet consists of hot dogs.

So look around your house, embrace the huge thumbs of future generations, and feel your skull. It may be the last time we have a head that we use.