Something I've Had on the Back Burner

 

     I usually feel good about myself until I watch an episode of TED Talks, then I feel very inadequate, dumb - as if I’ve missed the boat.  The show is excellent but not at all good for my mental well-being.

     The more I watch the dumber I feel.  I struggle sometimes just to keep up as they go about explaining their theories or discoveries.  I have to force myself to focus and not be distracted by the cat, strange noises in the back yard or smoke coming from the kitchen.

     Yesterday I watched as someone explained how mushrooms were going to save us all.  These mushrooms were going to clean up our environment, remove the bugs from our homes and repopulate the forest.  That is one impressive fungus my friend.

     Because they are standing up there spouting off all this technical jargon I tend to believe every word.  If they were selling stuffed mushrooms at the end of their speech I would placed my order.

     I believe the thing that bothers me most about all of this is the boat I mentioned in the first paragraph.  We’ve all heard about this boat but just where is it, and why is it always missed?  It is, no doubt, a general phrase handed down from our parents, who themselves claimed to have missed it.

     At least my Mother says she missed it.  My Dad, for some reason, spent all of his life waiting for his ship to come in.  That never happened.  Maybe had he been watching for a boat and not a ship things might have gone differently.

     There are nine things I’ll never have to worry about; the first is standing up on a TED Talks stage and spouting off about something.  I don’t know anything, which surprisingly enough is a good thing because it will keep me off the stage. 

    Second, I’m a writer and as we all know, writers write – they don’t give speeches; and three through nine is that I don’t know anything.  This blog should be proof of that.

     Doing my best to be a well adjusted individual I have accepted the fact that I have indeed missed the education boat and there isn’t likely any ship on my horizon.  I’m good with that.  I’ve also seen for myself that they can, when they want to, turn up the intelligence on television, although it is a very rare occasion.

     These thoughts have been festering for a bit and now that I've said them  I’m off to check out the source of the smoke coming from the kitchen. 

      I would have thought whatever it was would have burned itself out while I was watching television.