I suppose worry works for people like Tim Burton. He can turn even the fluffiest of holidays into an animated worry festival.
And whomever is responsible for network dramas, they’re making a mint off worry. In a trailer for a new TV show, a man was riding up an escalator to meet his waiting girlfriend. He had love in his eyes and flowers in his hands. He was surely going to propose! As she came into view, expectant and glowing, the floor dropped from under him and he fell from sight – swoosh – into the crushing bowels of the still moving stair he was riding.
Margagogo’s Seattle Bureau Chief cackled and snorted, “That happens … NEVER.”
I on the other hand, a frequent rider of NYC’s subway, feel sure there’s a chance – maybe a .00005% probability world-wide but that potential must leap to at least 20% at the Lexington Avenue & 53rd Street station here in Manhattan. The subway surgeons are there regularly, pealing back the metal skin of the long escalator riders rely on to ferry them deep underground and out again. Thanks to this show tease, I now imagine being the unlucky one in a game of Stair Roulette. If it happens, as my last act, I hope my disembodied hand rides the rest of the way up, propped upright in the metal teeth with my middle finger unfurled, to meet a waiting and expectant Governor Cuomo at the top.
Clearly, I’m a good candidate for the stairs but I like the boost. I don’t just ride, I climb and since I’m on an escalator, I do double-time without the speed related sweat.
Technology: Can’t live without it, take your life in your hands when you use it.
There’s some tech I vow to live without. Absolutely no fitness tracker for me. If I’m laying in bed awake worrying about robots taking over my job someday, I know I’m awake. I also know I should be sleeping. I don’t need a fitness tracker to tell me.
I know when I walk a lot because, well, I’m there. My feet and muscles feel it and they know, without digital documentation, when distance has been covered. I don’t need a “buzzzz” or a “ding” to tell me to get off the couch. Doing nothing requires a choice just like anything else. Of course it matters if I climb no flights versus a zillion flights each day. But by my count, the fitness tracker always gets it wrong. And, I don’t want the last bit of recorded history of my life to be my free-fall through a stair.
I’m not a showrunner so I’m ending this dark digression to get back to my starting point: Worry is a waste of imagination. I’d much rather imagine a great view and a margarita as big as my head. (Considering the whole purpose of this blog (see the origin story) that is a given.)
Here’s to a worry-free 2019!
margagogo 