Reflections From The Kitchen Sink on Google
“You know you can just Google that.”
I have heard that so much the start of the g-word is starting to nauseated me. I hear “guh,” and I’m reaching for a barf bag.
Some of my best memories over the years are directly correlated to my inquisitiveness.
“Mom, why does…?”
“Dad, how in the world does…?”
“(Teacher name), why?”
“Do you think maybe, (random person), that…?”
These days, if you want to uncover a mystery or learn a skill, people immediately say, “Google it.”
I don’t want to Google it. I want to have you look me in the eyes and explain it. I want you to demonstrate it within three feet of my live person. Let me see, smell, taste, hear and/or feel it for myself. I don’t want to passively watch it on my phone screen.
Does anyone remember when the power went out and stayed out for days? That has happened a couple times during my life. You know, back when I went to school with Laura Ingalls and wore that cute bonnet? I wanted to be a dinosaur doctor that year. What would happen if everyone’s phones and computer batteries couldn’t be charged? For days!!?!? Oh, the panic! What in the world are we doing to each other and our children?!?
I will tell you, from time to time, I have a dud batch of biscuits, but most of the time, my biscuits are better than just edible. I didn’t Google that recipe. I painstakingly watch my dad bake biscuits for years and slowly memorized the process. I listened to him talk about the right amount of moisture in the dough. I saw the stickiness of it. Even the amount of flour on the little glass he used to cut the biscuits for years was explained to me. I know how and why to salt gravy, too. Google didn’t tell me that.
My mom was an avid reader. She was an encyclopedia seller’s dream. Knock on our door with the newest set or the five-book enrichment series, and it was done: you just met your goal, mister! Congratulations to you!! Then, Mama would have me read. We would talk through things. Kind of a neat thing, you know…searching out information for myself. Google oftentimes takes the edge off of that.
We have numbed ourselves intellectually and, in the process, we are dulling our intellectual knives. If I’m in a hurry, I will cook canned biscuits, but I will skip that frozen gravy stuff. There are times, though, that I want the substance of homemade. I enjoy the messy process of doing it start to finish myself. I don’t want or need the shortcuts.
Yeah, I’m an old-fashioned fuddy dud. I’ve told my kids more than once a story about uphill travel to school in 94 feet of snow both ways. Actually, I’ve told them about getting to the bottom of a research paper page and having to type the whole stinking thing over because it didn’t leave enough room for the footnotes. Basically the same story.
Sure, tech is good in many ways. My engineering major son is cranking it in his computer science class at the university. Tech is part of life these days. I get it. My concern though is we’ve allowed it to take too much of our lives. Let’s get some of the wonder back to wondering. That’s some of the most invigorating rush there is to life in my humble opinion.
As an equal opportunity critic, I won’t blame just Google; Siri is at fault, too. There are still a few kinks in Siri’s research skills though because she doesn’t always catch dialects. That a pretty fun thing around this Southern house.
I’m going to make coffee like I watched my granny do for years now. Then I will scramble eggs like my mom showed me to. After that, I will get in the car and navigate without help to the neighboring town. Oh, yeah, I’m going to have a day of pure nostalgia.
…well, I can do all that after I wake two teenaged boys. Even Google can’t give me a solid strategy for that, I’m guessing. Wish me luck.
…until next time…
Ironically now I will ask you to follow me on my new social media outlets!! I’d love to see you there.
@sinktalk on Twitter
Melinda_sinktalk on Instagram
Bio-Melinda Campbell is a retired educator who currently focuses her efforts on raising her two teenaged boys, advocating for individuals with special needs and against drunk driving, and serving in her local community. Melinda has been gaining recognition for her writings labeled “Reflections from my Kitchen Sink” since the tragic death of her husband Michael in 2015. In her stories, she shares observations from her daily life including moments she has as a solo parent, a widow, and a woman who battles significant health issues including fibromyalgia and depression.
