Stuck on an Escalator

A retarded ignition allowed the Model T to be hand cranked without cracking the cranker’s hand when it finally kicked.

Once throbbing, the four-stroke four would smooth out with a thumb of the spark advance lever located beneath the steering wheel and opposite the column mounted throttle.

The three pedals on the floor prodded everything but the throttle.

Very few mitt-free options on the T. But then, back in the day… very few incidents of distracted driving.

Why shouldn’t drivers drive distracted? There’s nothing left to do but be distracted. Sure, the driver makes the payments, but the auto is possessed by the OBD2.

Lane departure warnings
Automatic pedestrian braking
Backup cameras
GPS
ABS (to keep the wheels spinning)
TCS (to keep the wheels from spinning)

Remote this, hands free that, and powered everything else. With airbags at every turn for when the OBD2 finally drives itself off a cliff. Soon, modern conveyances will be able to wander home on their own, kick the driver off on the doorstep, and put themselves away for the night.

Technology may have advanced but mankind certainly has not.

We used to know what laziness meant, but laziness is being redefined on a daily basis. What else would you call asking Alexa to change the TV channel?

Three telltale signs of laziness:
1. Failure to finish stuff
2.
3.

We don’t think for ourselves, so we don’t do for ourselves. But not thinking can be habit forming, though entertaining.

Grade school tykes, who wrote-off the rote memorization of math tables because their calculators would tabulate for them (today their phones have an app for that), grew up to be forageless Nine-to-Fivers foregoing their morning cup of joe when their Mr. Coffee goes on strike. Too stupid to filter steaming water through arabica beans.

Yeah, everyone’s a wiz ’til the power goes out.

A Norman Rockwell of millennial Americana would be a paint of weekend Walmart waddlers, as star travelers on the Buy N Large Axiom.

Merriam-Webster: ax·i·om | noun | (ˈak-sē-əm) a self-evident truth.

The highways would be far less hazardous, if drivers were safer than their rides. Perhaps, drivers’d be more focused double-clutching a floor mounted stick linked to an unsynch’d gearbox. And hasten a little more cautiously plucking a levered spark advance.