What the Ducks!

Quick!  What’s your answer: the iPod, the massage chair, the ability to order a Domino’s Pizza without getting off the couch?  Buzzzzzz.  Time’s up.  Actually, if you were a fourth-grader in my daughter’s class this past year, you would have been given a list of technologies among which you could choose (and there was not one medical device upon it!*)

If memory serves me–and it frequently doesn’t– the list included:

1. Television

2. Computer

3. Oven

4.  Telephone

5.  Refrigerator

(What, no, air-conditioning??? What planet do these guys live on?**)

As part of the assignment, Pamela had to contact ten different people and ask them this same question.  The responses surprised (and annoyed) her—nine out of ten folks said the same thing!  (The exception was a fellow child and you can guess which technology attracted him the most.  Not TV but close.)  I guess PJ was irritated because she expected a more diverse response (first lesson, junior scientist, keep an open mind!) but, really, if you’re an adult, there’s only one answer.

That’s right, the computer.

Oops, no, that’s what people do, not what people say.***  What people said was, of course, the refrigerator.  That’s because grown-ups know that you can actually live without artificial entertainment, you can presumably heat up your food on a rock or eat it cold (raw?), you can manage without talking to people on the phone but without a refrigerator, no cold breakfast pizza.

And who could live without that?

*Because they were going into the fifth grade not their fifth decade!

**Oh, it says right here: the Martian Educational Publishing Company.  Of course.

***I’m doing it right now!

Copyright 2012, Lori Fontanes