Holy David Post
Recently my wife and I went to a retirement community to visit with
her mother. Her mother was in her 90s and required full-time care.
The visit went well and we enjoyed seeing her and doing the little
activities that she does where she lives. We took her on a couple of
adventures which was fun. But it required us to slow down and do
things a little bit differently than what we're used to.
But there was one thing that reminded me of the past that I'm thankful
we're not in now. Due to storms the Internet connection for the place
where we were staying was out of service. The Wi-Fi was up and
running and we could connect but there was no Internet.
In the room where we stayed they had a TV with an antenna and all the
channels you can pick up on digital TV now.
We resisted for a couple of nights but then one evening we had some
time on our hands and wanted to vegetate in front of a show. So we
turned on the TV and found a show we used to watch, Law and Order.
Having to watch commercials again was terrible! Five minutes of show
followed by 10 minutes of commercials was mindnumbing. The
commercials themselves while they could've been funny were just wrong.
One was about your skin, one was about your bad health issue that you
needed to get this medicine for, one was about things you needed to
buy, one was about clothing that you should be wearing or shoes that
you should be wearing, and I can't remember the other one. Over and
over and over these things just pounded on our psyches telling us that
we were not enough we did not have enough and that all we needed to do
was give our money to these people and give our time to these people
and they would make us enough.
Having to watch over the air TV that night makes me incredibly
grateful for streaming services that I use now. While XM Radio drives
me crazy with their commercial free channels that talk about XM radio
and what are basically commercials I really enjoy the music. And I
enjoy being able to listen as we drive cross-country without having to
hunt for a local station filled with commercials about things that I
don't want to spend money or time on. I love Netflix, I love Prime
Video, I love YouTube without commercials or ads. And I love my ad
blockers on my browsers.
Just a reminder of how far modern technology has brought us. I hope
they have ad blockers in the meta-verse!
