Tag: consequences

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Oh, THERE’S My Flying Car

When the pandemic first hit, many people joked that we had become the Jetsons. After all, many of us work over monitors. We’ve got wristwatch computers and flat-screen TVs. We even have electronic assistants and housecleaners, even if they’re named Alexa and Roomba rather than Rosie.

But there was always one big exception. One that rose to the level of a meme.

“Where’s my flying car?”

Well, the favorite sci-fi staple may finally be waiting in the wings (er, so to speak). The Associated Press recently reported that the Alef Aeronautics Model A has received its airworthiness certification from the Federal Aviation Administration. Ironically enough, it’s still waiting for its highway certification, but if that goes ahead, the Model A could hit the market in 2025.

Er … yay?

I’m a sci-fi geek. (I know, you’re shocked.) So part of me does find it cool. But I’m also a long time Front Range resident. And so, I have to ask the obvious question.

“Flying cars? Have you seen the way people drive when they’re on the ground?”

OK, curmudgeon moment over for now. But it brings up a couple of useful reminders.

The first is that, even with the most amazing technologies, there are always tradeoffs. The automobile came as a godsend to many large cities, where horse manure had become a serious public health hazard. (New York City alone had to deal with 100,000 tons per year at one point in the 1880s.) Nobody had yet anticipated that we’d also have to deal with carbon emissions, drive-throughs on every corner, and people who head for the grocery store at 70 mph with no turn signals.

But in a way, that’s the easy one. We make changes constantly in our world and we’ll make more. And while we regularly create problems, we also create possibilities. If we can see what needs doing, and we’re willing to seek a solution, we’ve got a chance.

But that brings up the bigger challenge: us.

To put it simply: technology can change rapidly. Human nature doesn’t change much at all.

Go back to ancient Rome and you’ll find parents complaining about how their kids have lost all respect for authority. (And probably kids complaining about how their parents are out of touch.)  Step back even a century or two, and you’ll see people saying how morality is doomed because of the movies … or the waltz … or novels. And of course, we’ve all heard how customer complaints for bad service go back to the Bronze Age.

We still hope, worry, fear and wonder. We’re still capable of the most amazing bursts of creativity and the most idiotic bursts of stupidity imaginable. The tools can enhance that, but they don’t replace it. Even recent developments in AI are still set against a context of our wants, our anxieties, our priorities and our deep-seated need to see what Bart Simpson would have looked like in Shakespearean times.

That means we have choices to make. We always have. If we ignore everything except our own wants, needs and impulses, no tool ever invented will make things better. But if we reach to our neighbors with open hearts, if we let ourselves actually see the world instead of just the parts we like … well. That’s when we and our tools can work from the best of us.

It just takes a willingness to look to the horizon.

And while you’re looking, watch out for that Model A in the wrong lane.

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Small Wonders

As our family watched “The Fellowship of the Ring” together, Boromir lifted up the small golden chain that held the Ring and marveled at it.

“It is a strange fate,” he mused, “that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing. Such a little thing.”

In the film, of course, those words are an early hint that Boromir is beginning to become entranced by the Ring’s cursed power and that yet again, a character played by Sean Bean is not going to come to a good end. But this time around, the words hit me a little harder.

Maybe because this time around, we’ve seen the danger and life-altering transformation that small things can bring.

A reminder came just a few days ago from Kit Yates, a mathematics expert at Baths University in the United Kingdom. According to Reuters, Yates calculated that all the COVID-19 virus that currently exists in the world could fit inside a can of cola.

No joke – it’s the real thing.

“It’s astonishing to think that all the trouble, the disruption, the hardship and the loss of life that has resulted over the last year could constitute just a few mouthfuls,” Yates said in a statement.

Think about it. Nearly 2.4 million deaths worldwide (as of Saturday). Populations wearing masks, quarantining, keeping their distance. The very way we live, learn and do business utterly transformed. All of it packed into a space that would make the world’s worst Coke.

It sounds impossible. But most of us know the reality. As the great philosopher Yoda once put it, size matters not.

A single nail in the wrong place can bring a two-ton automobile to a stop.

A single tweet at the wrong time can set a nation aflame.

A single sentence with the wrong intent can end a relationship that’s lasted years. Decades.

A strange fate indeed. But as the saying goes, it’s the little things that’ll get you.

And lately the consequences seem to come with lightning speed.

That’s not an argument to live lives of timidity, sitting motionless and silent in the living room lest we say or do anything wrong. But it is a useful reminder to be aware that what we say or do has effects beyond ourselves, and that preventing trouble is a lot easier than fixing it.

That’s why we take cars in for maintenance. It’s why we treat other people with courtesy and respect (or should). It’s why we wear masks and wash hands and look out for our neighbors.

Sure, sometimes it’s frustrating. Sometimes we just want to cast it all aside and do whatever comes in our mind. Most of the time we hold it in, because we know we’re not the only ones who could get hurt.

But there’s another side to it that’s worth remembering. It’s not just the bad things that echo.

Good things add up, too.

They don’t get as much play. But I can still remember every unexpected gift from a neighbor. Every helping hand from a relative. Every stranger who stepped off the sidewalk to make room because Missy’s wheelchair couldn’t social distance. And each act living in my memory helps give me more encouragement to do the same.

When we reach out, when we heal, when we defend from the wrongs of others – it makes a difference. To others. To ourselves.

It takes longer to resonate, of course. It always takes more time to build than it does to destroy. But if we look to help where we can, when we can, as we can and keep doing it … that persistence can also change the world.

Avoid harm. Build help. It seems like such a simple thing, doesn’t it? Such a little thing.

But together, we can make it go viral.

And when we do, I’ll bring some Coke to celebrate.

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Seeing Outside the ‘Box’

Apparently, this year is for the birds.

If you don’t quite see where this is going … well, that’s kind of appropriate. Neither did a Utah teenager who decided to blindfold herself while going for a drive a few days ago. The short sightless trip ended up just about as you’d expect, though thankfully the resulting two-car crash produced no fatalities or injuries.

Why the blindfold? If you’ve been watching Netflix, you probably already know the answer. Yes, this was the latest turn in the Bird Box Challenge, an attempt to imitate a thriller where failing to cover your eyes leads to horrific visions and death.

In this case, of course, the horrific visions are the ones posted on YouTube as non-actors attempt to accomplish everyday tasks with their eyes covered. Sometimes with collision or injury resulting.

“Can’t believe I have to say this, but PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE,” Netflix tweeted in response to the fad. “We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.”

I have to admit that calling this out feels a little hypocritical. When I was in junior high school, my sisters and I invented the highly original game known as “Blackout Tag.” To play, you simply descended into the basement, turned out every light source until the surroundings were pitch black, and then played tag while crawling on your hands and knees. (Why crawling? Safety, of course!)

We only played once. Charging headfirst into a table leg in the course of the game will do that. It remains the stupidest black eye I have ever received, and probably the one least believed by my friends at the time. “Oh, you ‘ran into a table leg.’ Yeah, sure. Right. How big was the table and what grade was he in?”

Anyone could have seen it coming. Except us. We didn’t just turn out the lights – we turned out any thought of possible consequences.

Sound familiar?

As a species, we’re good at not seeing what’s right in front of our faces. Sometimes it’s just because we live life by reflex. Most of us, I think, have driven home without any real awareness of the road or the buildings on either side – not because of a blindfold, but because we’ve seen the route so many times that we don’t see it any more.

Other times – well, other times, it’s a little more willful. We encounter facts that are inconvenient. Or pain that we don’t want to think about. Or rumors that are so nice to just believe. And so, we cover our eyes, not wanting to challenge our view of the way the world works, looking away from anything that might shake up the way we’ve always lived our life.

That has consequences. Not always as dramatic as a two-car crash on a Utah parkway, but potentially, just as harmful.

It means a lack of empathy, because we fail to see others as meaningful and worthy of care.

It means a lack of cooperation, because we fail to see anyone’s view but our own.

It means a lack of foresight, because we fail to see dangers we could plan for – or worse, blindfold ourselves by fixating on dangers that don’t exist.

“Bird Box” isn’t entirely wrong. Choosing to see can be painful. It can change your life, and not always in comfortable ways. But while voluntary blindness may make tense, entertaining fiction, sight is the real survival skill.

Open the box. You might just appreciate the bird’s-eye view.

Certainly the drivers around you will.

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Another Story

Everyone leaves, sooner or later. But I’d always kind of hoped William Goldman would be an exception.

If you watched movies at all, you know who William Goldman is. Heck, you’ve probably quoted him a hundred times without thinking about it.

If you’ve ever read about an investigation of political corruption and thought “Follow the money,” you’re quoting Goldman.

If you’re a Wild West fan who’s ever seen characters in a desperate situation and remembered “The fall’ll probably kill ya!”, you’re quoting Goldman.

And of course, if you’ve ever seen the actor Mandy Patinkin anywhere – on stage, on screen, in an airport – and immediately felt yourself saying “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die,” you’re quoting Goldman. (And you’re in a very long line.)

His words and ideas gave life to a hundred stories. He put a crack in the myth that the screenwriter is the most powerless person in Hollywood – something that gives heart to every writer out there, including me –  while also enduring his own frustrations with the movie machine, such as the 14 years it took to bring his favorite of his novels, The Princess Bride, to the screen. And then he made it awesome anyway.

In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m a fan. In fact, Missy and I had just read The Princess Bride as our bedtime book a few weeks ago. So when Goldman died on Friday, it was a little like losing a favorite teacher.

And his best lesson was that there is always a story behind the story.

Plenty of writers create a compelling story. The best  create stories where the characters have depth, where they’re more than just a pair of steely eyes, a favorite weapon, and a cunning quip.

But where Goldman excelled was in looking at the assumptions of a story itself, and then pulling back the screen.

A master swordsman who’s quested 20 years in pursuit of his father’s killer? Great! But he’s also working for a boss he hates to pay the bills, because revenge isn’t a terribly marketable skill.

A pair of Western outlaws staying one step ahead of the authorities with fast draws and faster minds? Sure, we know that one – or we think we do, until we see that they’re in a West that’s going away, too late to stay frontier outlaws and too soon to be gangsters.

Hard-nosed reporters on the trail of the cover-up of the century? Sure, it’s faithfully told – including the fact that no one showed Woodward and Bernstein the script in advance, so that they have to listen to what isn’t said, stumble through trying to call a Spanish-language source, and even manage to screw up their big story on the front page on the way to nailing everything down.

It’s a good lesson, in writing and in life. Look at the assumptions. Consider the real-life consequences. Ask why you’ve seen a particular story a hundred times before, and you’ll see what gives it its power. And then see how to truly make it your own.

And if you still get in the killer quip , so much the better.

Stories are powerful. Stories frame how we see the world, even as the stories we tell – whether on the page or in our lives – influence the thinking of others. The more conscious we are of that, and the more we think about the unexpected turns those stories might take, the more we can make it a story worth living for all of us.

So thank you, Mr. Goldman. For the lessons in writing. And the lessons in life.

Wherever you are, “Have fun storming the castle.”

And if you’re also giving someone a peek at what lies behind the drawbridge, I won’t be surprised at all.

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Ooh! Tasty!

When you come to know Big Blake, our muscular English Lab, you quickly learn three things.

First, that he is enthusiastic, as befits a dog who is 11 years old going on 2. He never descends stairs when he can charge them. He neve lets out one bark when 75 will do. And why simply greet someone when you can knock them right off their feet?

Second, that he is a coward about water. I don’t mean the baths that every dog dreads. I mean that he won’t go outside when rain is falling, and that even dashing through a sprinkler is a traumatic event that has to be worked up to.

Finally, and most importantly, he eats. Anything.

Big deal, I hear you see, he’s a Lab. Let me repeat: AN-Y-THING.

Entire bag of chocolate chips? Check.

Enough crayons to decorate the yard? Double-check.

So many baby wipes that he turned into a canine Kleenex box at the other end? Check and mate.

So when my wife Heather called me at work and told me that Blake might need a vet run, I was anything but surprised.

“I think he ate a bunch of aluminum foil while I was in the bathroom,” she told me.

Mind you, aluminum is not a Typical Dietary Supplement(tm) in this house, even for our canine trash compactor o’doom. But Heather had been making no-bake cookies and disposed of a fair amount of aluminum wrap afterward. When she came out of the bathroom, she saw that there was no longer any wrap in the bin … and that Blake was enthusiastically licking the last piece of thin metal on the floor until it gleamed.

And thus did Blake resume his starring role at the veterinarian, induced to bring up what had been down.

In retrospect, this should not have been a surprise. Blake smelled cookies. Blake had the physique and opportunity to pursue the wonderful smell. And given that his first impulse is to turn anything remotely edible into Blake fuel, he wasn’t going to care that the remnants of sweet-smelling goop still had thin metal attached.

At least, not until he was made to care. Rather abruptly. And then spent the afternoon woozy and sulking.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I don’t mean that any of us are in the habit of eating aluminum. (Though if you find the cans to be the best part of a refreshing Dr Pepper, the Weekly World News is on line two.) But as a species, we do have a habit of jumping to decisions that seem oh-so-good at the time, only to discover that there’s stuff attached that doesn’t feel so good later.

It might be the attractive face that (poorly) hides the toxic personality. The anti-terrorist laws that say “Quick, be safe! And don’t worry about that silly Fourth Amendment.” And the ever-familiar candidate who has your best interests at heart, really, and then does a mile-long swath of damage that anyone with a newspaper subscription and a fourth-grade reading ability could have anticipated.

I’m not saying that we should never compromise on anything, that nothing less than perfect is acceptable. That way lies paralysis, and possibly a career in Congress. What I am saying is that too often, many of us don’t even think about whether compromise is necessary at all or consider what’s being traded off. We simply act, and then deal with unpleasant consequences later.

And “later” has a way of arriving sooner than we think.

Forethought isn’t as fun, I know. Especially in a world where everything demands to be done now-now-now. But it’s worth taking the time to consider, to weigh, to discuss. When you articulate what you want, you force yourself to think about what you’re getting. And what comes with it. And whether it’s worth it at all.

That’s valuable, no matter what you’re doing in life.

After all, no one wants to be foiled again.

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Just Bust a Lip

Some people have the moves like Jagger. Somehow, I wound up with the upper lip instead.

OK, not “somehow.” After all, I do live in a slapstick movie that Chevy Chase would envy and Mel Brooks would direct. Part of that privilege is that I can see exactly what’s about to happen – just in time for it to do me absolutely no good.

It’s how I’ve wound up stepping off a perfectly good stage. Or finding sewing needles with my bare feet. Or chasing a barfing dog around the bedroom, running into every conceivable obstacle on the way. (Oh, you’ve heard that one?)

And in this case, it’s how tripping on one broken piece of sidewalk turned a healthy walk to work into “OWWWW!”

I got lucky as I caromed off the concrete. No broken teeth, no broken nose. That seems to be part of the deal with my invisible producer: no lasting injuries that would kill off the chance of a sequel. Short of that, anything goes.

And in this case, “anything” was my swollen upper lip, to the tune of three stitches and enough blood for a Friday the 13th film.

Fun, huh?

Educational, too. For the past week, in fact, it’s been a constant tutorial in the Iron Law of the Universe: “You can never do just one thing.” Consequences snowball, whether it’s the Amazon butterfly raising a typhoon or the casual dinner remark sinking a political career.

In this case, my failure to pay attention to what my feet were doing didn’t just win me a Rolling Stones look-alike contest. It also guaranteed:

 

* That I would be unable to be understood by voice-message trees for at least two days. (“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Please try again …”)

* That drinking a glass of water would be on a difficulty level with competing in the Hunger Games.

* That drinking anything ice-cold would trigger expressions best not read in a family newspaper.

* That whistling would not be an annoyance to my co-workers for a while.

* That, contrary to “Casablanca,” a kiss isn’t just a kiss when your pucker feels like it’s hit a porcupine.

* That any kind of lengthy out-loud reading – longer than a page or two – was out of the question for the immediate future.

 

In a way, that last one hit the hardest. Reading is what I do. What I have done since the age of two and a half. Combine a love of books with a love of performing and the result is that I have read to and with anyone willing to listen for years: my dad, my sisters, my grandma, my wife Heather, our ward Missy, the dogs …

These days, it’s the vital bedtime ritual. Before the lights go down and the house goes quiet, I sit on the edge of Missy’s bed and read, a journey of the mind that has roamed from Missouri to Middle-Earth and from secret gardens to open warfare.

But when the stinging of your lip says “stop” after two pages, Hogwarts can take a little longer to visit than planned.

Well, lesson learned. And maybe even a small blessing with it. It only takes a few days of doing without something to discover what your real priorities are – what’s an inconvenience and what’s an essential. Being in a position to recognize that and to make adjustments later is no tiny thing.

It’s better still, of course, to be paying enough attention before a crisis hits. Especially when it’s often inattention that creates the crisis in the first place. Think, plan, imagine, observe. Act, however you need to, even if you don’t think you need to right now.

It may all seem terribly abstract.

But it’s amazing how fast it becomes concrete.

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Discovery

This is not a column about Ariel Castro. Not directly, anyway.

In all honesty, I think most of us have given more mental space to him than we really wanted to. And when word came this week that Castro had killed himself in his prison cell—well, the response was about what you’d expect for a man accused of kidnapping and long-term sexual slavery.

“About time.”

“Now he’s facing real justice.”

“He held those women for over 10 years and he couldn’t take a month in jail? Coward.”

I understand, believe me. When someone tied up in that kind of enormity decides to save everyone the trouble of deciding what to do with him, there’s a certain grim satisfaction for many. Probably not so grim for some.

But something’s bothered me for a couple of days now. A worn spot of sympathy, where my heart has been quietly pacing, over and over.

In all the hoorah over finding Castro dead … we’re forgetting that someone had to find him.

Someone discovered the body.

And I can’t really imagine being in that situation at all.

Discovering a suicide is traumatic enough for anyone, of course. The human mind doesn’t readily let go of a death, especially a violent one. It puts the event on replay, maybe trying to make sense of things, maybe just unable to turn away, like a driver passing a traffic accident.

But this wasn’t just anyone.

This would have been a prison guard.

And that has to introduce another level of mixed feelings.

On the one hand, guards aren’t immune to revulsion. They would have read the same news stories the rest of us did, would have seen the same photographs and heard the same statements. They would have known who they had and likely – no matter how professional they might be – known the same disgust any of us would.

But a guard is responsible for a prisoner’s safety. The first duty is to make sure the prisoner stands trial, that he doesn’t flee the people’s justice by whatever method.

And so, finding this hated man dead on your watch, having to try to revive someone the country despises, having to think afterward about how it happened, about what crack in the wall of attention let it happen … well, layered on top of the usual trauma, that’s a potential emotional storm to rival Katrina or Sandy.

I’m not saying Castro will be missed. I am saying someone will be scarred.

And isn’t that often the way of it?

Nothing we do happens in a vacuum. As the saying goes, you can never do just one thing. Every action has its consequences, its ripples, its people touched and affected though never seen.

When I was a teenager, I talked a friend out of killing himself. I’m still not sure how. I look at his life now and his wonderful family and realize how many lives that touched, many of whom I still haven’t met.

When I was in junior high, I was regularly bullied. That shaped my life, too. And but for the actions of others in that life – parents, teachers, friends – that life could have fallen into a shambles, with consequences for every friend I’ve made and life I’ve touched since.

I don’t want this to turn into a remake of “It’s A Wonderful Life.” But it’s worth thinking about. There are always people standing to the side who will feel a decision that was never made with them in mind, from the personal to the geopolitical. Who receive the gift or bear the price for what someone else has done.

We need to stand ready for those people, whether to recognize or to aid. They may have been unintended, but they cannot be forgotten.

Whoever the guard was, I hope his friends and family are there for him tonight. I hope his boss and his co-workers are. I hope he’s less shaken than I fear, more resilient than I hope.

Because there’s a person in this column that I’ve thought quite enough about.

And I refuse to let him have one more victim.