Sometimes I wonder if there aren't people somewhere writing bizarre directions for complicated networks and electronic devices and then laughing their heads off because we are blindly following them. Like the time we got our only brand-new car back in 2000. At the dealer they said in order to set the compass and the time to the proper time zone and attach to a certain GPS satellite we had to go to an open area, like an empty parking lot and, drive the car around in circles until it reached some set of numbers. Despite my best advice, Dennis HAD to follow directions and then there we were, going round and round the K-Mart parking lot and suddenly we were "linked in". I'm thinking the GPS "linked in" to someplace at the manufacturer and they were sitting there taking bets on how many times we would go around in meaningless circles till we figured it out. Of course, now that I think of it, my sister sold us that car.....
Or when my other sister got a new atomic clock the directions said we had to take the clock outside----I swear I am not making this up!----face Ft. Collins, Colorado, and let it sit there until it set itself. I don't know! It was either worshipping some false god in Ft. Collins or somebody somewhere was hysterically laughing at the thought of all the people who bought that clock making fools of themselves in their back yards. Or front yards depending on where Ft. Collins was from your house. And who knows which direction Ft. Collins is anyway?
Things don't have to be high-tech to be secretly evil. Back when baby wipes first came out they were sold in a canister similar to the ones today but the opening where you had to reach in and pull out the first one was where they got you. It was a plastic circle with teeth-like points all around and once you put your finger in, there was no coming out. It was like Chinese handcuffs; the harder you tried to get out the tighter it held. And it hurt! You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. The first time I got stuck in one I was working in Vacation Bible School at our church in California. The other workers in the nursery tried to help but it wasn't coming off. They actually were getting ready to call the Fire Department when someone said "Get a knife," and I don't remember after that.
I steered clear of baby wipes from then on. Well, except for the day we brought Josh, our first child, home from the hospital. Dennis had to go to work and my mom was not due from the airport for several hours and the baby really needed to be changed and all of a sudden there I was, wearing that baby wipes canister on one hand and trying to hold a screaming baby with the other. I don't know exactly how I did it----I tend to block extreme pain from my mind----but I somehow freed myself before my mom got there and was met with a poopy baby and a frantic daughter. Somebody somewhere probably got a big kick out of that!
And there just may be a hidden camera in one of the rest stops on I-44 on the way to St. Louis. The faucets there are made in such a way that you have to push down on the top for the water to come out, then hold your hands under the faucet but when you let go of the push button the water goes off. So you push it down again, try to whip your hands under it, and the water is gone! Again and again!! It is diabolical. When we were there I kept trying and trying and finally went out to get my daughter-in-law, Jerilyn, to come in and hold down the button so I could wash my hands. She thought it was very funny. When she finally got control of herself she said "Try holding the button down with one hand while washing the other, then switch." She may have been in league with Them.
Now, I am very grateful for some of today's technology, like the bell that rings in my car if I leave the lights on, but a few years ago----okay, decades----that did not exist and if you left your lights on the battery was most likely dead when you came out of the store causing untold misery in hunting down jumper cables, finding someone to jump the battery, being late for work and frozen vegetables melting in the back seat. People didn't lock their cars as much back then so if I was walking through a parking lot and saw that someone had left their car lights on I would reach in and turn them off for them. I am very helpful that way. There was that one time, though, when----it must have been a newer car with some innovations I was not aware of----I reached in the open window to turn off the headlights and the trunk popped up. I looked for the hidden camera while I was briskly walking----okay, running----to my car but I wasn't able to catch them that time.
I'm pretty sure They are watching me all the time. And laughing, for one reason or another.
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