Are you sure you want stories from way back then? It's so long ago.
You're sure? Ok, then, my sweet one, here it is.
Let me think back a bit:
In those golden days, we had something called the "pilot light." It was a small flame burning in our stoves, all day and night long. It was natural gas, burned for our convenience -- to let us light other fires on our stoves, piped from hundreds, even thousands of miles away, for our convenience. Because of that pilot light, we didn't have to strike flint, or use a match.
In those golden days, convenience was all that mattered. We had cars to take us everywhere, night or day, personal cars that we could use to make it easier to get anything. Anything at all. Nobody had to walk, or wait till Saturday for the market.
We could go to stores -- just like the Saturday market, but every single day -- that had their own refrigerators, and they held sandwiches wrapped in plastic, that we could buy. People would drive cars to these stores, just to buy a sandwich, or a sweet drink, day or night, because they wanted it. We could even drive through restaurants, and get a hot sandwich in a sack, for hardly any money.
Here's one: in the golden days, we had caps for every cup. Plastic caps, that would hold the heat, or the cold, inside the cup. These caps would only be used once, and then thrown away. It was convenient. We didn't care if it would last forever. We didn't care if we could use it again. We didn't want to care.
In the golden days, we used plastic bags all the time. Thousands, millions of them. Bags for trash. Bags for food. Plastic bags around snacks. Plastic bags inside plastic bags. Bags to hold anything you'd want. It didn't matter, because it was convenient, and meant we thought we were safe. The bags were free, but if we wanted a lot of them, we'd pay for the convenience of a roll of plastic bags. That's right -- a roll of a hundred plastic bags!
In the golden days, we didn't think it mattered. We shipped vegetables from California, and Argentina, and Poland. It was convenient for us to eat them in January. We wanted them, and we figured out ways to get them.
In those golden days, everything had a plug, and we left everything on. Lights, televisions, computers, clocks. We even had lights that stayed on all night long, on every street, just in case someone came along. It made things easier, and made things seem safe. We could see the street whenever we wanted to look. We could have television in 1 second, instead of waiting 30 seconds for the thing to turn on; computer in 1 second, instead of 90, waiting for the router to connect.
In those golden days, we could get as much fish from the ocean as we could eat, so much fish that we fed it to cows, and pigs, and chickens, because it was so easy to get. We scraped the bottom of the ocean because it was convenient, and easy, and profitable.
In those golden days, we flew in the air, just to see somebody for an hour. It would take only half a day to fly from New York to San Francisco. We used to complain about "the red eye" -- that's a description of how our eyes would look, because it was so inconvenient to fly in the nighttime.
In the golden days, we were complainers. We complained because gasoline was so expensive ("five dollars a gallon!"). We complained if we couldn't get fresh ocean fish, even in Oklahoma. We complained if we couldn't get exactly the kind of sweet drink we wanted, instantly. We complained about "the economy." We complained about what we called "the national debt." We complained about anything that wasn't exactly as we liked it.
In the golden days, we complained if we couldn't get anything we wanted, instantly. We complained if anything had a smell. We complained if we had to sit in our cars, sitting still on the road, waiting for the cars ahead of us to move, because it slowed us down from getting where we wanted to go. We complained if we couldn't get Internet the second we wanted it. We complained if it was hot, or cold, or wet, or dry. We had machines that changed all of those things, so we wouldn't need to complain.
In those golden days, everything was easy. We didn't have to grow anything -- it was all grown for us. We didn't have to make anything -- we could just buy it. There was nothing we couldn't do, and if anything got in the way, we found a way around it. In those golden days, we had everything, anything, everything we wanted. And still we complained! Can you believe it?
Those days are gone, my sweet grandchild. Now sleep, my dear, and dream of those golden days. Tomorrow we have much we have to do.
Good night.
