Gesundheit

The people charged with the task of advertising and selling filters speak to us using words like particulates, instead of using words we’re more likely to assimilate like - crap.  Rescuers and newscasters, after a tornado, refer to our possessions as rubble and debris.  Doctors speak of procedures when what they really mean to say is slicing you open.  Car salesmen talk of miles per gallon and popularity instead of obsolescence and repair costs, but that’s rather a different issue.  

 

          I remember the long string of alphabet letters along the top of the blackboard when I was just learning to read and write.  There was a capital A followed by a lower case a, then a capital B followed by the lower case b, and so on.  We were learning in small increments; baby steps.    

 

          One of the people at our Monday card game is a retired teacher.  His name is Tom and he taught math, science and chemistry.  I would guess that were you to place his brain on a shelf next to the brain of say… me, you would find it difficult to believe they were from the same species.  Both human, and yet one functioning from the left side and the other almost exclusively from the right.

 

          Both brains throughout life were exposed to the same exterior stimuli; each experiencing the same opportunities and growth period, both starting with baby steps.  Very little environmental difference between the two and yet one believes in Occam’s razor while the other - disposable Bics.  One spices up his language with references to algorithms and Euclidean geometry, while the other wishes to add the element of surprise to the periodic table. 

 

          I believe both brains are needed in society; one with the ability to design and build a computer and the other having just the right amount of particulates to fill a message.   

         

          A relative gave our name to a salesman in exchange for a free home air purification system.  Consequently the salesman called us hoping to gain an invitation to come over, tell us how terrible our air quality is and then sell us an amazing system that will remove so many particulates from our air that as long as we didn’t open any doors or windows we would never sneeze again as long as we lived.

 

          Now this was truly something to think about, never having to sneeze again for as long as we live…   Why just the time saved in not having to say, God bless you would override the thousands of dollars such a system might cost. 

 

          Seriously, there are things I would like to filter out of my environment, like sales calls, hiccups and if the filter were strong enough it would remove 99.9% of government; leaving behind just enough to use as a reminder for future generations on what not to do.

 

          However, as sneezing has never really been an issue for either of us, I indicated to the salesman that having a large black box in our living room making an annoying whizzing noise, albeit purifying the air, would adversely affect our Feng Shui, chakras and Juju.


    He obviously couldn’t argue with that.