The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The latest study on teen usage of electronic devices found that they spend over 9 hours a day texting, gaming, video watching and net surfing. And this is when they’re not in school. I can only assume teenage crime rates have dropped to near zero. When would they have time to shoplift? Or to plan a robbery?

Any way you slice it, this is one helluva lot of time spent on social media and the rest. More time than school, more time than … well, anything. Except maybe breathing. This is good news for Apple, Google , Samsung and Facebook. To call it a national epidemic, well, let’s not be Alarmists. To think of it as a national addiction, c’mon, we’ve had TV for most of our lifetimes.

One of my neighbors yesterday told me he’d bought a cellphone. I said say it ain’t so, Joe. Not you! He grinned the way a convert to Jesus grins, sins washed, iniquities atoned, born again, fresh start, brave new world. He told me the great deal he got — meaning I should haul right down and get one too. Just spreading the Good News, I guess, proselytizing the ignorant. You better believe I’ll be checking under the bed tonight for alien pods.

Join the Hive. Accept the Borg. Sign up on Facebook. Carry a cell. I’m the Last Holdout on the South End now, an anachronistic curmudgeon with one foot in the 19th Century, still got a phone plugged to the wall of my cave. Outside the cave I’m disconnected. Satellites can’t reach me, friends and telemarketers can’t call me, the mizzus has to holler or just let it go til I stroll back in. At the grocery store I have to make decisions without outside help. Do you want the pitted olives or the unpitted, honey?

Sure it’s lonely, course it’s eerily quiet, damn right it’s a life of isolation. Just the way I like it.

Am I legend? Naw, I’m just a living fossil, that’s all.

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The Flatheads, the local car guys, were holding court down at the Diner yesterday, talking hemis and 12 volt conversions between ribbing Brenda, that morning’s breakfast waitress. Brenda can hold her own and the tips double with her saucy backswings. Crazy Karl asked her if she was nervous after the latest mass murders.

“Don’t get started, Karl,” Ralph said. “My wife won’t go to the mall. Says I got to do the Christmas shopping this year. She thinks the Muslims will attack us during the holidays.”

Two Toke Tom stopped his fork midway to his mouth and began eavesdropping in earnest, mostly why he eats at the Diner with me, I figure. That, and he’s got his eye on Brenda but hasn’t worked up the nerve. She refills Ralph’s cup and says to Karl, “Me worried? Naw, I bought a gun this week.”

The entire table of carboys rotate their heads the way Les Schwab rotates tires. The way sunflowers turn to face the sunset. The way the NRA stops to admire the guns at Cabelas. “Whadja buy, Brenda?” Bronco Barry hollered across the cluttered tables.

Poor T.T. I could see he was reconsidering his adolescent secret romance. Brenda said she’d bought a shotgun. “Phil down at the pawn shop said that way I couldn’t miss.” Half the Flatheads nodded knowingly. Two Toke moaned quietly, then couldn’t help himself, his disappointment grave and overwhelming. “Miss what?” he asked and now all eyes swung to the Pacifist Table. I pulled my hat lower and slid deeper into the booth, trying to merge with the naugahyde.

“The terrorists, ya numbnut,” Karl smirked. “Brenda,” I whispered, “I’ll cash out, okay?”

“The terrorists?” Tom asked, incredulous. “Holy crap, seriously?? You think they’re pouring in off the beach or what???” “That’s what my wife thinks,” Ralph moaned. “I think the government ought to call off Christmas this year.”

Brenda laughed. “You just don’t want to go shopping, Ralph.” The car boys forgot Two Toke for the moment, considering the hell that might befall them too once the panic spread. I took the momentary pause to scoot out of the booth, startling Brenda. “Don’t shoot,” I mumbled, throwing up my hands. Nobody laughed, trust me…. I don’t know yet if T.T. made it out alive or not.

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My younger brother and I are cut from the same cloth … and I can say with some degree of certainty it wasn’t fine linen or rare silk. We took very different career paths, if you can call mine a career path at all, but he went into pharmacy then took a degree in law. Nice combination if you want to maximize fiscal returns, which is exactly what he had in mind. The fact that he’s a millionaire a few times over is short testament to the wisdom he had vs., oh, say, mine.

One of the first jobs he had once he passed the bar was working for a corporate law firm in Madison, Wisconsin, the kind of firm you really needed to buy a custom leather attache case for what I paid for my cars at the time. He was young and eager to please back then, something that would change over time and eventually lead him to start his own firm so he wouldn’t have to carry bags for others, expensive calfskin or not.

He tells the story of the first lunch he attended with the firm’s Milwaukee office, what he calls a roomful of ‘big swinging dicks,’ boys with swagger and ego’s as big as they could fit under a million dollar tort. To break the ice, the head partner suggested they go around the table while they were munching on horsdoerves and say who, if they could sit with one other person for a luncheon, they would invite. Anyone from history, anyone at all.

Well, of course, the Big Boys invited Albert Einstein and Tom Jefferson, George Washington and Shakespeare, Galileo and Jesus Christ, Buddha and Michaelangelo, all the big hitters and big thinkers, molders of men and inspirational dreamers. They’d pretty much gone around the table when they finally got to my brother who’d had plenty of time to ruminate on his fantasy lunch guest. All eyes turned to the new guy.

“Well, this one is easy,” he said. “I’d invite Willie Mosconi.” Lawyers held forks mid-launch, glasses got set back down, napkins were folded and placed beside their plates. Finally the lead prinicipal asked, after a long pause, “Who the hell is Willie Mosconi?”

“The greatest position player to ever pick up a pool cue. The man who won the World Championship Straight Pool Tournament 15 times, the most ever,” my brother said, maybe surprised no one else had chosen Willie to dine with them. “Over George Washington or Albert Einstein?” someone asked, incredulous. “Maybe you never saw him run a table,” my brother responded. “Beautiful to watch. Made every shot look easy. Almost perfection. Course, Minnesota Fats would be a good choice too. But I’ll take Willie.”

99% of us would have picked what these folks expected us to pick. Even if we thought a ham and rye with Albert might be the longest lunch we ever ate, relatively speaking of course. But not many of us would risk looking like an imbecile, a bar room hustler, to answer honestly. Which is why, if I’m ever asked who I’d like to invite to lunch, one person in all the world, through all of history, I’d probably pick my brother.

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