I’m personally a “summer” person and generally do not care much for the winter. However, this past weekend I layered up, packed a duffel bag with warm clothing and on a 4-hour notice went skiing with my friend Yaji and her coworkers. On the car ride there, we stop for food at Wendy’s. I personally try to avoid fast food and haven’t had any in probably over a year. Yet, somehow I convince myself that I shouldn’t make a fuss and just go with the flow and order something. After all, at age 21 I don’t want to be “that” person preaching about health and being uptight. I order a chicken Caesar salad and muse about the fact that none of these salads are any better than the hamburgers as they are loaded with creamy dressings, fried chicken and an assortment of crunchy toppings. Whatever, I eat and drift in and out of sleep for the entire ride. In addition to having eaten rubbery tomatoes and wilted lettuce, I am suddenly struck with the realization that I have become an anticlimax to myself. Usually, I’m the boisterous one on road trips, singing out loud, laughing and being ridiculous and now I find myself fighting the urge to take out my book on Latin American political history and just reading. I’m not sure where and when I starting becoming so lame, I’ve always been a self-professed dork but even this was too much. I blame it on the winter even though its more realistic to assume it’s the combination of school, work, volunteering and extracurricular activities that’s weighing down on me.
I push all my responsibilities to the back of my mind and think of skiing and nothing else. The next morning we set out to the slopes after a hearty breakfast at McDonald’s (haha) and I’m ready to hit the bunny slope! I haven’t gone skiing since high school and I’m even scared of the chair lift (bad experience in the Andes mountains) still when I go down the tiny hill, I gain confidence and soon I’m zooming around small children and sloppy adults. After a few times, I convince my two friends who opted for skiing versus the cooler snowboarding, to join me on an intermediate hill. I asked around and was told there was no intermediate hill but that I could just “take it easy” on an advanced one. I thought sure why not and took the long chair lift ride up, telling Ricardo, a first-timer, that he would do just fine. Well long story short, I went too fast and opted to crash into a tree instead of zooming down the steep hill and into oblivion. I hit the trunk with full force and was mangled in my skis. I just kept saying “OWWWW!!” and a kind stranger came over and helped release me from the scene of the crash. With my thigh bruised and my back feeling dislocated , I chose to walk down the hill which took 45 minutes with Ricardo and Yaji who after watching my accident before their eyes did not feel like taking too much risk.
Once on solid ground, I buy deep-fried oreos because sugar makes everything better. Besides, after McDonald’s and Wendy’s my food morals have gone out the window. We meet with the rest of the group and since the sun is setting and we’re all starving we head to a diner. We sit at the table and the first thing I notice is that there is literally a flat screen TV on our table! Bewildered, I look around and see that every single booth-style table in the diner is outfitted with a television set. This feels so wrong and yet so American that I am not surprised as much as disappointed. I turn to gauge the public opinion at my table but everyone is too excited yelling out channels and ordering food. I tell Yaji that this is crazy and she says “No, its genius, it’ll keep kids quiet.”
Keeping kids quiet or not, I feel that dinner time should be family time or at least time to talk with the people who are joining you at the table. It’s one thing to watch television while you’re eating alone but quite another to do so when you’re actually in the company of others. I kept stealing glances at the many families dining, eyes glued to the screen while routinely forking food into their mouths. There was no exchanging of jokes or stories about their day, in reality the only talking done was to ask for the salt or another condiment. Maybe, I was so intrigued that I began to over-analyze the situation, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the role of technology in today’s society, whether it was bringing us closer or driving us apart. It’s funny how we think other people’s customs, say taking an hour to prepare an obento-style lunch for a 5-year old is plain crazy, and yet fail to notice the absurdity in our own way of life.
