Tag: frustration

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You’re a Scarce One, Mr. Finch

Psst! Want a line on the next hot commodity? Lean in close and I’ll tell you.

Zebra finches.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Well, not in that regard, anyway.

For some time, Heather and I had marked out Friday on our mental calendars as “Z-Day,” the day when we would finally restore a zebra finch or two to the house. It had been almost a year since our tiny D2 had flown this world, and we needed some energetic beeping in the house again. Apparently, so did our cockatiel Chompy, who had been getting excited ever since seeing the new cage go up.

There was only one catch.

“What do you mean, you don’t have any zebra finches?”

That was the theme of a long Friday afternoon and evening. Store after store after store in a 75-mile radius gave the same answer: Sorry, nothing now, try back in a couple of weeks. (Well, except for the one that said “Sorry, we just sold our last two this morning.” Sigh.)

If you want to blame COVID-19 … well, you might be right. This is a world where many things are slowed down by precautions and quarantines, and I suppose it’s not surprising that live birds aren’t an exception.

Still, while it may be reasonable, it’s still hard.

That’s sort of the theme for this stage of pandemic life in general, isn’t it?

You know what I mean. We can all feel “normal” getting closer. Most of us by now know someone who’s gotten the vaccine, or even several someones. There’s been hints of hope in the air, signs that maybe the drawbridge can start to open this year, that by fall or winter we’ll have regained more pieces of the life we used to know.

But “close” isn’t the same as “here.”

And reminders of the gap between the two still abound.

Thinking about it, grade school was great training for this. You spent a lot of time doing things that were necessary, whether you really wanted to or not. And the closer you got to summer vacation, the more interminable those last few structured days and hours felt. To an anxious third-grader, the last week before summer is a lot like the last 20 miles of a long car ride: “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Then and now, the answer’s obvious. It’s not the answer we want, but it’s obvious all the same.

And we really don’t want to be kept into summer school this time.

And so we go on. Teased every so often by the promise of what’s ahead, only to run up against one more reminder of where we still are.

Frustrating.

But time will pass. Things will change. Finches will come, along with many other things.

We’ll get there.

Oh, it won’t be the same world. It never truly is from day to day, even without a sudden pandemic muddling things up. Just as with any other crisis in our history, there’ll be lessons we learn, behaviors we change, newfound strengths or scars that we carry with us. “Normal” is a moving target, one that we redefine with each generation.

But more normal than now? Less isolated, less wary, more “a part of” than “apart from?”

Yes, I believe that. Absolutely. We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do, but we’ll get there. And when we do, we’ll have a new appreciation for the precious things in life. Like togetherness. Hugs. Mobility.

And, of course, zebra finches.

You don’t get much more valuable than that.

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Hold the Phone

The Digital Age has its new poster child.

On Wednesday, when most of us were learning firsthand about bomb cyclones, an Australian man got out of his car to find a visitor waiting outside his home – with a bow and arrow at the ready. So the man followed normal 21st century safety procedure.

Namely, he pulled out his phone and started taking pictures.

The archer fired. The arrow was on target. And according to Reuters, the homeowner walked away with barely a scratch.  Why? Because the arrow hit and killed the phone instead.

OK, show of hands. How many of us have wanted to do that to a smartphone, just once?

Thought so.

Our world of tiny phones and big social networks has come up for a lot of mockery over the years, sometimes justifiably so. People have walked into manholes while texting (and then, predictably, tried to sue). Fatal car accidents have resulted from drivers with one hand on the wheel and both eyes on a phone. In our time, we’ve been just an arm’s length away from the manipulations of political saboteurs, the boasts of killers, and even the rise of Justin Bieber.

So is it any wonder that when Facebook and Instagram went kersplat for many people on Wednesday, the mass frustration was mixed with a little joking relief?

“Son, I wasn’t alive for the Donner Party or Pearl Harbor, but I am old enough to remember when both Facebook and Instagram were down at the same time during that terrible winter of ’19,” comedian John Fugelsang joked.

The memes! Will no one think of the memes?

More seriously, though – it’s human nature to be frustrated with the tools we depend on. It was true of the first computer. It was true of the automobile. It was probably true of the first ancient human to deliberately set a branch on fire, and then later discover his teenage son had burned up Dad’s favorite spear. “What do you mean, you wanted to see what would happen?”

But for every frustration, our tools also open a door. Sometimes some pretty amazing ones.

My wife Heather is often stuck at home because of chronic illness. Her phone opens the world to her, allowing her the experience and interaction that her body might otherwise bar.

An acquaintance of mine has a love of reading and a tiny apartment. His devices give him access to a library that would overwhelm a four-bedroom house.

I have dear friends halfway across the country whom I’ve never met, yet “visit” regularly. We’ve shared joys, sorrows, and horrible jokes as easily as any next-door neighbor.

I’m sure most of you could add more. The weather report in a pocket. The research library that’s open at 2 a.m. before a term paper is due.  The chance to quickly learn a home repair, or some language basics, or just figure out the lyric you could never understand on the radio. On and on and on.

Sure, our tech can frustrate. It can be used badly, even horribly. But it doesn’t have to dehumanize. Used well, it can bring us together and open up possibilities that put a science fiction writer to shame.

It’s up to us. It always has been. And that is both a frightening and a wonderful possibility.

The future’s in our hands. What will we make of it?

Hopefully, something a little better than target practice.

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Hitting Reset

The Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians had reached the height of their battle for a history-shaking triumph when I heard the thumps, like elephants dancing a tango overhead.

One thump usually meant our 85-pound dog Blake had jumped on the bed for the night. Two could mean he’d gotten down to try a different spot. Multiple thumps from the wrong side of the house meant … what?

I dashed upstairs, traced the noise. Missy’s bedroom. Inside, our disabled ward was on the floor with all her blankets underneath her. She’d fallen out of bed, and then started hitting the ground in frustration rather than get up.

“Missy! Are you OK?”

Physically, she was. No broken bones, no obvious injuries of any kind as I helped her back up and onto her mattress. But still she cried, a night interrupted in the worst possible way.

My wife Heather appeared in the doorway. “Oh, honey,” she said, sympathy in every word. “Do you want a little more of your story?”

Missy nodded. I pulled out the book that had been set down just before the lights went out. And soon, we were smiling and giggling at tales of adventure and ridiculous exertion on a world that would never be.

The world had been made right again. All was restored to its place. And after the lights went out, I went back to our bedroom to thank Heather for the suggestion.

“A lot of times, it just helps to go back to doing what you were doing before,” she said.

A reset button.

It seemed too simple to be true. And yet, I knew what she was talking about.

In case I was too slow to get it the first time, the larger world was re-enacting it downstairs. The Cubs had seemingly been in the midst of one more traumatic collapse, from a 5-1 lead to a 6-6 tie, when a rain delay had hit in the 10th inning. The brief stop gave the Cubs time to come together, rally, and clear their heads before returning to the field to get the job done.

“Because they met, they pumped themselves up and won that inning,” Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer told the Chicago Tribune after the renewed team brought home its first championship in 108 years.

“(Right fielder Jason Heyward) said ‘Let’s forget about everything up to this point. Let’s believe we can do this,’” the night’s MVP, Ben Zobrist, told the paper.

Forget. Reset. Renew.

Easy to say. Easy to forget.

I’m stubborn. Many of us are. It’s tempting to focus on the frustration, on what’s not working, on what’s worse and not getting better. It feels good, in a perverse way, to pound the floor and cry.

But it doesn’t get you anywhere.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked away from a piece I was writing that went nowhere, or a tedious chore that had gone south. Not for good, just to clear my head before taking a fresh run from the last place that worked. As Sir Paul McCartney put it, to “get back to where you once belonged.”

It was going right. And it can be again.

Forget. Reset. Renew.

The night ended with a smiling Missy, back in bed, the covers safely around her.

The night ended with an exultant baseball team, charging the field, sleep postponed by jubilation.

The night ended – but the lesson went on. Simple and clear.

No tango-dancing elephants needed.

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Taking His Best Shot

Lucas Hinch may have become a new international hero.

Granted, few of us have ever met the Colorado Springs man. But he managed to seize his 15 minutes of fame recently after his computer gave him one battle too many. Mr. Hinch, of course, dealt with his frustrations in a mature and responsible way.

Oh, who am I kidding? He took the computer into an alley, pulled a gun and put eight rounds into it.

I’ll wait a few moments for the cheering to die down.

Naturally, I’m not endorsing this as a method. Spontaneous gunfire is rarely a solution to anything, including the latest televised adventures of the Rockies’ bullpen. (Pillows are the traditional projectile for a television screen bearing bad sports news, at least in the case of my late grandfather-in-law.) But I think anyone who has ever spent more than five minutes staring at a Blue Screen of Death can sympathize entirely with Mr. Hinch.

For my wife Heather, it’s a no-brainer. More than once, she has intoned the magic words “Scotty, I’m throwing this thing out the window!” after our machine of the moment ate a college research paper due in an hour … or dropped a connection in the middle of an online game … or simply got its power button stuck, requiring fingernails worthy of Dolly Parton to pry back into operation.

She never did commit that act of electronic defenestration, by the way. But I think that had less to do with sweet reason, and more to do with chronic illness and the annoyance of putting up new storm windows.

How do so many of us reach that point?

That may seem as obvious as asking whether I-25 will be a pain in the neck tomorrow. But it’s a valid question. Certainly, computers have become vital to our day-to-day life. But not every critical aspect of our life tempts a 9mm sonata.

The answer, I think, comes down to communication.

The other day, I saw a bumper sticker in the grocery store parking lot: “If animals could speak, we would all be vegetarian.” Whether you agree or not, it underlines a larger philosophical point – it’s harder to hate something that has become real to you, that has a face and a voice and a genuine response. It’s why prejudices sometimes wither when an “other” is met personally, or why a famous personality may seem to be so much nicer when met face-to-face.

And, on the flip side, it’s why our blood pressure goes through the roof when communication is hopeless.

The best example may be road rage. If someone accidentally walks into your path on the sidewalk, the most likely response is a quick apology, maybe even an embarrassed laugh. Come just a little close while driving and the results are screams and angry horns. It’s not just the higher speeds and masses of metal, it’s the fact that we no longer have another person in our midst – just a metal box that’s impervious to our hard feelings.

I don’t know how to solve PC rage, short of giving the machine actual reasoning abilities – and that way lies Skynet, or at least a future where humanity never wins at Jeopardy! again. But it does suggest a way to lower the pressure in so many other areas of our lives. Talk. Listen. See the faces around you, not just their positions on the landscape.

We don’t have to agree. But if we can at least see each other as human beings worthy of attention, the rest can follow. Maybe we can even find some common interests to share.

And if those interests include a recalcitrant laptop and a pair of sledgehammers, I’ll be over in five minutes.