Simple? Or Not?

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Simplicity... It's what you long for...

...the days when you could make a business call (to your health care provider, for example) and instead of being given six different categories each with a number to press followed by an off-key rendition of some light classical piece performed by an elementary school orchestra inside an empty airplane hangar, the phone would be answered by a real human being who would actually help you. RIGHT AWAY!

...the days when you could travel by plane without waiting in line like a pack animal, then pulling off your shoes, struggling out of your overcoat and getting patted down or indecently X-rayed...days when your sweetheart, your family and your  friends could go with you all the way to the departure gate and wave goodbye as you mounted the steps to the plane. You could even turn around and blow a last fond farewell kiss.

...days when you didn't have to remember twenty different pass codes and/or pin numbers.


...days when you didn't have to give out personal information over the phone to hearing-impaired robots who keep asking you to repeat what you've already clearly and carefully enunciated TEN TIMES!

...days when all the faucets in all the public bathrooms worked EXACTLY THE SAME WAY and toilets did not self-flush loudly and explosively before you'd completed your business.

Simplicity describes how the Amish live and also the lifestyles of Zen masters, sadhus, rishis, yogis, self-appointed  gurus and wannabe hunter-gatherers.

Simplicity places the blame for economic upheaval and social unrest right where it belongs on the shoulders of the (take your pick) illegal aliens, Jews, African-Americans, Muslims, Gays, Indians (both kinds), beer-bellied reactionaries, latte-slurping liberals, Zoroastrians, Patagonians, unregulated thespians, and reticulated troglodytes.

reticulated troglodyte

Simplicity is the band name of a pattern I was obliged to follow in junior high school sewing class and which I managed to make complicated, after all, by being incapable (almost) of threading a needle or, once having threaded it, stabbing myself repeatedly in the thumb, thus producing a mish-mash of snarled, blood-stained threads and a garment that resembled a hastily-improvised Halloween costume for someone posing as Oliver Twist's sister or the Little Match Girl

IN CONCLUSION:


Simplicity is often undone by technological "improvements."

Terrorists have succeeded in ruining the heretofore simple travel patterns of American citizens.

People who sanctimoniously display their simplicity end up demonstrating simplicity's opposite -- i.e., pretentiousness.

People who promote simple antidotes for complex social problems end up by making those problems even more complex and harming other people in the process.

Simplicity sewing patterns are NOT simple -- at least not for everyone.

P.S. In case you're wondering, I did manage to pass junior high school sewing class with a C- but that was only because I snuck the product of my struggles home and my mother transformed the two randomly stitched, blood-spattered pieces of cloth into something that faintly resembled a skirt and blouse.