Full Circle

My mom likes to tell the story of when I was three and out of the blue one day I asked "Who is going to bury the last person to die?" You know, like humans would die off and one day there wouldn't be any left, so the last remaining person would be without a burial. This was a pretty philosophical question for a three year old and it just goes to show that some parts of our personalities are there from the beginning; I am still that way, always asking the deep questions.

So now, at 27, I'm back to thinking that's going to happen - there'll be a day when humans won't be around. I think we're a failed species, and that the failure started to happen somewhere around the agricultural revolution. It's only a matter of time before we branch too far away from how humans were intended to live, to keep on living. I just hope when that time comes that we don't bring down the whole of the Earth and the rest of its inhabitants with us.

What got me thinking about all this right now is the letter that came in the mail yesterday. We got a new microwave in November, and in January it stopped working. I called Emerson to get a replacement, as there is a one year warranty, and they gave me trouble. Finally I got someone to agree to send me a replacement (the fact that it's easier to replace something than fix it is a whole other topic) but they wanted me to send a $15 money order for the shipping cost. Yeah right. It's their fault the microwave crapped out after two months. I kept calling until someone gave me the answer that I wanted.

So I did what they said, cut the cord, wrote a letter and mailed it in. They say it could take up to four weeks for the new one to come. That was three weeks ago. The letter came in the mail yesterday telling me that my request has just been processed and it will be two to three weeks for the microwave to come, but that if it hasn't arrived in six weeks to please contact them about it. That is such crap. It could conceivably be more than two months and I might still not have a microwave.

Do you have any idea how often American households use their microwaves? Try taking it away and you'll probably realize that you use it several times a day. On one hand I'm happy having to make do without, and a microwave is certainly something that people a generation before didn't have the benefit of. But on the other hand I'm just pissed at this company and the way they are handling this. I almost wish it was something truly necessary that had broken because that would give me the right to get really angry about it.

All of this gets me thinking about technology and how dependent we are on it. How if all the technological things that make up the very bones of our existence should ever break down, the human race pretty much would stop dead in its tracks. I'm convinced that someday the internet is going to crash and with that most of our existence will be gone - it's scary to put so much stock in something we have very little understanding of (at least I don't understand how it works). It's the reason that I still do math in my head when I have the time, or refuse to get cable, or try to understand the technological intricacies beyond what I need to know to make something usable to me. I don't ever want to forget how to use my brain.

I saw something advertised on TV after LOST last week (the one hour of regular TV I watch all week)...it was a special about what will happen when humans do finally die off...how the other species will take over the world, all our precious monuments will start to crumble, etc. And while I was intrigued, I wasn't enough to actually watch it because I'm definitely not happy about what I think is going to happen. I mean, why am I having another child to be brought up in a world that is unhealthy?

But on a daily basis now I must field questions about these topics because my four year old is obsessed with death. He's making stronger connections everyday, asking harder questions. He knows now that everything and every person will die - that that is part of the cycle of life. A couple weeks ago Jacob put an arrow through my heart when he vocalized my deepest fear. He asked in a meek voice, "Mommy? Someday am I going to die?" Then yesterday, the fear that is equally as immobilizing, "Mommy? Are you going to die?" Yikes. I told him no, not for a very long time. "But Gordy died." What he meant by that is that my father died when I was a young, so what is stopping one of his parents from dying before he's grown up. That is the question that I'd been holding my breath for.

I'm giving him answers, but it's really tough because I'm still trying to figure out what I believe. So I give him the answers that I wish were true in the hope that maybe someday I'll start to believe my own words.