Killing Time

Now that's a birthday cake!

I just learned that several popular restaurant chains, such as Chili's and Applebee's, are starting to employ a new system designed to make eating in a restaurant more like ordering fast food from the drive-thru lane. Besides making fatties feel right at home, this is a huge advancement for the Democratic party, eventually eliminating hundreds if not thousands of jobs for waiters and waitresses and freeing them up to receive welfare, food stamps and unemployment benefits. Through the magic of science, touch screens will be implanted at each table, allowing the diners to see the menu and then place their orders without human intervention. While waiting for their food, diners are then spared that outdated convention-- conversation--and instead may play games on the very same device. This will occupy the kids and allow the adults to focus on their own smart phones, writing emails or what have you. When the food arrives, it's eat up and pay right there by swiping a credit card. No waiting and you're out in a flash, on your way back home to your still-warm home computer.

The future seems so exciting, doesn't it? There will be so much more free time to spend playing video games and ignoring your family. I am sorry I will be dead for most of it. Perhaps in a few years even the President will be replaced by a computer, and all political decisions will be made electronically. You'll be able to vote from home, or maybe even while you're out to dinner.

My birthday is coming and my husband keeps asking me what I want, as if on that one day of the year I deserve something special, thus allowing him to live the other 364 days guilt-free. Sadly, what I want cannot be found in a store or the mall or online; in fact, nobody can give it to me but myself: Peace of mind, freedom from fear and those last 10 pounds gone. Some other things I'd like but can't have are: A cigarette, but only if I could smoke one without it making me cough, making me sick, giving me cancer or emphysema, leaving that awful taste in my mouth and filling me with remorse.  I'd like to look like Ingrid Bergman--not now but when she was alive. I'd like my dead dog Rufus back. Fresh cartilage in my right hip would be nice. But most of all I would like those restaurants to decide that dinner out is the last vestige of human interaction among families and decide to deep-six that technology forever.