Indeed? Actions Speak Louder Than Words…

I received one of those emails that make you wonder whether or not you really do pay as much attention to things as you’d like to think you do. Then again, perhaps there are people in this world with way too much time on their hands. This email came from someone who is always passing along emails like this. No harm. No foul. They were just sharing something that was sent to them. It tickled their fancy. It was a list of imponderables to ponder. Chin scratchers as the old timers used to say. There is some value to this exercise. Maybe too, it’s about not accepting everything at face value. Or, maybe it’s about our skewed attitudes about certain things. So, with that in mind, I’m going to attempt to answer the seemingly unanswerable questions; sometimes seriously and sometimes not. You be the judge.

Why do supermarkets make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front? ANSWER: The merchandising “authority” is not in sync with the ADA (American’s with Disabilities Act) “authority” and that may be a sign of a bigger problem – right-hand versus left-hand. Neither knows what the other is up to. The merchandiser wants to heighten your awareness of everything else in the store as you walk towards the pharmacy with the hope that they’ll get some impulse purchases out of you. Or, at the very least, they feel most of their shoppers will bundle their errands so, to accommodate them, they’ve placed the in-store pharmacy at the end of the “store flow” in the grand plan-o-gram. Okay, so what about the cigarettes? First, if you were that ill, you more than likely wouldn’t be in the store. Second, if you smoke, you’re not healthy. Third, when you need smokes, you need smokes. That’s the only priority. Get ‘em and light ‘em up. It’s like having to go to the bathroom when you gotta go.

Why do banks leave vault doors open and then chain the pens to the counters? ANSWER: You can touch the pen at will but you need to be a bank employee to get behind the teller line. That would be a somewhat logical answer. Then again, the open vault may be a psychological “thing” to indicate to customers that the bank management feels secure about their security and so should you be. Never worked for a bank so this is a shot in the dark! Or, maybe the pen thing has to do with possession being nine-tenths of the law. Another thought, that vault door is heavy. Maybe it’s plain old laziness.

Why do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in our driveways and put our useless junk in the garage? ANSWER: We consume too much. We have way too much as George Carlin said, “…This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house…” Our priorities are all screwed up and our common sense is perhaps not as common as it once was. He also asked us to ponder, “"When did we get so thirsty in America? Is everybody so dehydrated they have to have their own portable supply of fluids with them at all times?" Department stores have Organization aisles or sections or departments with stuff to put your stuff in and it still ends up in the garage.

Why don't you ever see the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery'? ANSWER: That’s a good question. But, maybe the really good psychics have won the lottery but kept it to themselves. Sharing a gift is one thing. Cash, well, that’s another matter. Or, it could be a psychic code of ethics. Or, maybe – oh, never mind!

Why is it that a person who invests your money is called a broker? ANSWER: The answer is obvious isn’t it? I’m sure a psychic can tell you. In this case, a futurist will do. Alvin Toffler will tell you that it’s not really investing, it’s gambling.

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour? ANSWER: Blame it on the Law of Diminishing Returns or, the Law of Supply and Demand. If you want to avoid rush hour, you have to either leave before or after. I guess that means that if you’re in a rush when everybody else is you’ll be in a jam. Traffic jams create a phenomenon called traffic waves. You’ve seen a traffic wave at traffic lights. That’s when, although the light turned green, no one seems to be moving. In actuality the wave is the result of everyone in the line of traffic not moving at the same time. What’s the solution? Get the rail down here instead of talking about it and studying it for another fifty years!

Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections? ANSWER: Because the longer you have to get to know a convicted killer, the further away the horror of their deeds seems to the present time, unless, of course, you’re the victim’s family. It’s perhaps about complacency bred from familiarity. Or, maybe it’s about indifference to those whose lives he destroyed because you know the convict better than you know the victim or the victim’s family. Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” Justice is not swift enough for the wronged and too quick for the wrongdoer. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” according to social activist Gabriel Pendas. But, who is justice for? Maybe the needle is sterilized for the same reason there’s too much junk in our garage for our cars.

ONE SIZE FITS ALL ANSWER: If I may – I believe the answer to all of these questions has to do with our culture. If society shapes our consciousness as Karl Marx said, it is because our economic system determines the ideas we have. We rush to work and rush home in a car we can’t put in the garage to make money to buy more junk and get stressed out and smoke and complain about walking too far to the in-store pharmacy to by the meds we need to relieve the pain or counteract the unhealthy lifestyle we live and buy lottery tickets in the hopes that more money will make our lives better and convince ourselves that if we won the lottery that we’d put a lot of it in the bank or, call a broker to invest it for us and then we’d have time to devote to causes like the death penalty or victims’ rights.

When in fact, we all have too much time on our hands that we waste on shopping and acquiring more stuff which means we need to work and on and on it goes. Although we believe what we think and say is the truth, the truth is just the opposite. If we had to revert to spending most of our productive hours finding and processing our food as our forefathers once did, we might not only be better off, we’d have less stuff and more common sense. And, maybe, we’d be in less of a rush during rush hour and not so worried about pilfered pens, too. Well, the silly email did more than give me a chuckle.