NEWS FLASH: We're Living Lighter, But Not Brighter

You can't do anything about the backlight on your watch, but you can buy a new watch. Nick Puhlot  1999 -

Since Nick's birth, he has learned to extend the length of daylight hours by playing on corners, under streetlights and the occasional headlight or, when lucky enough to sneak it out of the camper, his father's battery-operated camping lantern. Yet, despite the daylight enhancing capabilities he discovered, Nick often sees his father standing in the driveway, squinting at his watch, thereby not supporting Nick's conclusion that people are living brighter than they once did.

While Nick's father tends to stay up later, that is mostly because he wants to, not because he can actually see his watch in the dark and make a conscious choice to do so.

In the depth of his father's darkness, Nick's curfew is not receiving much attention either. With Ipods on their ears, and fascination with their poorly-lit watches making their lives fuller, richer, and more glorious in many ways, more and more parents are standing in driveways staring at their wrists these days. Well, some actually hold their watches up to the window so they can see the time, but those who want to waste the lives of their children don't.

Other people believe their lives are better if they buy cuckoo clocks and leave the windows cracked so they can hear the time while standing in their driveways. They spend money on anything advertised (even coo coo clocks) because they like to buy things they hear about to hear about something else. It is believed that these people might be semi-bright.

Expanding the brightness of our lives is not about buying cuckoo or coo coo clocks, however, but about investing the energy into walking out to the streetlight to see our watches. We grow, or maybe shrink (in a good way), by taking those extra steps.

Our human spirits are designed to walk to the corner, lift our arms, bend our necks, and see the time. And to pick up our children off that street corner and bring them home before they waste their lives out there.

Living longer than our ancestors did is not such a good thing without owls to announce bedtime and roosters to wake us up in the morning, unless we have good backlights on our watches. If we stand in the driveway indefinitely, we will become tired and grouchy and have corns on our feet. These conditions do not lend themselves to enhanced old age.

We need to teach our children to buy medium-priced watches with backlights.

Those who don't might as well be named Emil Lampost.

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News Flash: We're Living Lighter But Not Brighter