The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

As the planet called Earth continues to rotate and wend its way around the sun, we–Lt. S and I, the Captain, continue our journey in the ship called The Big Red House. We’re getting older. So is The House.

And so is the stuff in The House. Technical stuff that we depend upon for our daily survival on our journey. Yesterday, in almost a direct copy of a scene from an old episode of Star Trek, the microwave emitted an unearthly squeal and shot smoke out both sides. We were, it seemed, under attack. Those darned Romulans at it again.

I looked at Lt. S: “Prepare for warp speed. We’ve got to leave the ship. Why can’t things just stay the same?”

She seemed calm. “Perhaps,” she said, “we should instead just go buy a new microwave.”

“Oh.” Well, sure. Maybe we should. And I was just ready to say: “ENGAGE.” Darn it.

So we busted out a small cruiser. Cruised off to a town. Brought a nice new silvery microwave home, inserted it in the place where the previous one had apparently succumbed to an attack by extraterrestrial beings from another planet.

This one didn’t have any numbers on the front. Pushing numbers must be old technology. That was too much work for the public. Better to give us idiot buttons to push. Obviously, we no longer know how many seconds it takes to heat a cup of tea. One button just said: Tea.

What has happened to us? We’re over weight, over fed, under nourished, and need more and more complicated changes to keep us busy.

To open it, we pushed a thing that took away from us the onerous task of pulling the door open, stuck a cup of tea in there, and hit the button called: “Tea.”

So far so good. Lt. S seemed worried. I didn’t know why she would be. This was way more modern than the old one. I grabbed for the door handle, like I would have the old one. Oops. No door handle. Yup. Door handles are old fashioned. I pushed the big square button that pulled the door open for me. 

Nothing happened. Pushing it once didn’t work. I pushed it again. And again.

It was locked. I looked at the instruction manual. Looked like about 40 pages of instructions. Handed it to Lt S. Nice thing about leadership: The ability and talent to hand stuff off. Not my skill set, directions. Nope.

Lt. S was totally immersed in the direction book. I called the help phone number. It rang. Or dialed. Or buzzed. Or whatever you call it now.

Someone answered. He said: “Hello, this is Elvis. How can I help you?”

“Elvis,” I said, “how are you? I knew you weren’t dead. What have you been up to?”

And he had a foreign accent. Must have moved overseas.

But he had that same accent. Rounded off his “g”s. Kind of muttered.

“How can I help you?” he said.

“Well,” I said, “we just bought this new microwave and installed it in our space and time ship. I put my tea in there, and now the door won’t open.”

He said: “That’s because there’s a kiddy lock that needs to be disabled.”

“A what?” 

“A kiddy lock, so kids can’t hurt themselves.”

“Well, poop.”  I thought about it. Asked: “How do I disable it?”

He said: Find a kid. Tak’em about two seconds.”

And there you have it folks. The next generation will have anyone over forty in an old folks home before we know it.