Tag Archives: technology

How I Cured a Ticktock Tic

True Story!

Back in college, I developed a nervous habit of looking at my watch every minute or so. I doubt anyone else noticed the habit, but I sure did!

My wristwatch was a cheap old Timex, so here was my solution…. I took the back off and removed the movement and face. Then I disassembled the movement, threw the loose gears in the case, and closed it up. The useless watch went back on my left wrist.

True to form, I’d look down at the watch every minute or so. Every time I looked, I had to laugh at myself. There, under the crystal, were a bunch of loose gears, telling me absolutely nothing. Nothing except, “Hey dumb dumb. Stop looking down here!”

The Background Image
That’s not my watch. Who knows where my “Hey dumb dumb” watch got off to. Somewhere between college and now, I lost it (I really did). I’m tempted to buy a cheap old watch to recreate the college timepiece. Its photograph would replace the background image, created in Photoshop from a couple of Pixabay downloads.

The Limerick
When I first thought of writing this limerick, I immediately came up with lines 1, 2, and 5 (the “A A… A” lines). That left me lines 3 and 4 (the “B B” lines) to tell the whole “how I fixed it” story. Believe it or not, that was the hard part. In the prose above, it took me thirty-six words to say what the limerick says in twelve words! That’s one of the main things I love about writing poetry: the challenge and charm of compression.

Have you ever read the most compressed poem of all? Even I can remember this one:

Fleas
Adam
Had’em

Ogden Nash

Tolled a Vision

Commentary

My pastor had this response: “I like it. Slowly we die as we are absorbed by the fictional lives of others dancing before our eyes when real life is just a power button and a glance away…”
My riposte: “… and a good pair of sneakers if you’re so disposed!”

Despite my riposte, this poem is more about the first stanza than the second. Not everyone can don a pair of sneakers and join me on long hikes. But everyone can seek to live as directly as possible, fully appreciating their own God-given life and embracing God’s offer of rebirth, restoration, and eternal life. For most people, this appreciation and embracing requires a little — or a lot — of contemplation, meditation. Noise and distraction are the enemy. Compare my poem “Alone at the Lake.”

About the title: I’m not completely happy with the title. You can probably tell that I started with “Television.” From there, I started pushing on “Tele,” “Tell,” and finally landed on “Tolled.” It may be too far out there. But consider that “toll” is associated with death (“For Whom the Bell Tolls”). It also sounds like “told.” Even as the flitting and vapid* “lives” of fictional characters displayed on a television have “tolled” our dying, and have “told” us the bad news, nature itself has “told” us about better news, the hope of resurrection. A big stretch, I know! This is my blurry vision, and now I have told you.

*This needs work. I do think there is something of “the medium is the message” in this. In television, we have lives that are extinguished with the press of a button.