I am writing this on a computer.
This is normal.
The computer is the size and weight of a pad of yellow legal paper.
This is normal.
While I am writing on the computer that is the size and weight of a legal pad, I am listening to music via headphones.
This is normal.
The headphones on which I am listening to music while writing connect to the tablet-sized computer without a wire, leaving me with what is effectively a perfect personal radio station beamed directly into my head.
This is normal.
I am writing on the computer and listening to my music on cordless headphones while I am connected to the sum total of human knowledge via a global network that has the ability to link every person on Earth to every other person on Earth.
This is normal.
I have the time to write and listen to music and be connected to all the rest of humanity because I am on an airplane that is 39,000 feet above Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia and hurtling toward Washington D.C. at almost 600 miles an hour.
This is normal.
While I am in this metal tube that opens the entire world to nearly all of humanity, writing on the computer that is connected to all human knowledge and opinion and listening to music via magic, I am dressed to the nines in grown-up clothing, including a jacket with a pocket square that I bought from the internet without ever trying it on and a pocket square I bought for boots made from a fancy catfish that traveled a greater distance to become my boots than I have ever traveled to do anything.
This is normal.
I am dressed this great while I am writing and grooving and surfing and flying at 39,000 feet over West Virginia because I have to go there for my day job, which I normally do via video-phone with as many as 150 other people at a time via the aforementioned global computer network because all those other people I talk to all day on the Jetson-esque video-phone all live in different places like Seattle and Denver and San Diego. (They all live in America because of my employer’s inflexible views on the subject; I could very easily have video meetings all day with 150 other people who lived in places like Brazil and India and Nairobi.)
This is normal.
Before I boarded this flying machine that opens the world to all of humanity looking like a million bucks so I could listen to music unencumbered by wires while writing a column for one of my jobs on the way to my other job since I had to do something because on the amazing flying machine there isn’t quite enough of the special invisible rays to allow me to have face-to-face video conversations with people from all over the world, I bought a cup of clean hot water infused with ground and roasted plant parts to help me remain alert plus for flavor, shelf-stable milk, and some sugar that has been molecularly altered to render it free of calories, and also I bought a small container of milk that had been altered by specialized bacteria to render it a more pleasing and nutritive breakfast and was topped with out-of-season berries that had almost certainly arrived at the facility where they assemble such things by airplane.
This is normal.
For the cup of coffee and small container of yogurt that I carefully and neatly ate before boarding the airplane on which I would open up my lightweight tablet, fire up my Bluetooth headphones, and write this column on the way to Washington DC for four full days of meetings, I was charged $11.75.
This is ridiculous.
Alan Brouilette, a Forest Park resident, is a monthly columnist for our sister publication, the Forest Park Review.
