Click

So last week I turned off the TV. This is not really an unusual thing: I turn off the TV all the time, usually forty minutes or so after I turn it on. Last week, though, the sucker stayed off. I even unplugged it, in case of overweening temptation.

(I've discovered that one of the best weapons to deploy in the service of thwarting a vice is another vice: a little laziness will go a long way toward preventing me from inhaling seventeen bags of chocolate chips. Or in this case, the Five O' Clock Weather Update.)

Yes, it was TV Turn-Off Week, and the Aphaeresis household signed on with a soupcon of trepidation and a sh**load of self-righteousness. I was going to love life without TV! (Or, more accurately, without the DVDs of TV I order through Netflix because commercials make me crumudgeonly.) I was going to sing and dance and frolic through my freed up time! Loosed from the demonic tractor beam of the television, I would discover new hobbies, finish my novel, cure cancer, etc.! And still be in bed by 10!

In actuality, I was in bed by 9:30, which was kind of nice. Also nice was the quiet of the evenings, the slower pace at which they unfolded. The light lasts a long time at this time of year in Indiana, and without the TV, I saw each gradation, every stair of the flight down to dark. I read a little more. I listened to the radio and played a board game or two.

But productive? I was as productive as a furloughed auto worker on dope. And I think I've figured out why. After a long, hard slog at work, TV offers you a mental respite, a secluded lot in which you can park your conscious self while the rest of you makes out in the back seat. Freed from TV, I promptly sought out alternative places to park the noggin: trashy novels, crossword puzzles, cookbooks...

We need some time to sit and not think. TV turnoff week merely reminded me that I can choose how to get it.

The Neighbors are Making Out!

I spotted them from the bathroom window when I went to take take a shower. I caught the motion of human bodies, one leaning forward, one leaning back, so I lifted the curtain. I'm nosy: I always bite. Were they talking? Fighting? One rolled over the other and I thought: nope.

They are one story down and one house over, in the bare-windowed sunroom where I see the mom and dad of the house talking with their friends some Sundays afternoons. It's the teenage girl and her boyfriend, though his hair is as long as hers. They are chaste but enthusiastic, nuns at a roller-skating rink. They keep coming up for air.

Discuss:

• I never made out with my high school boyfriend in my parents' house on a Tuesday night. I never had a high school boyfriend. And now it's too late.
• How many of our private moments are public? How many people are trying manfully (womanfully) not to laugh at us from their upstairs windows? How many people observe our passion -our pure, unguarded moments- and let the curtain fall?

It Fell into My Mouth, Officer.

My name is Anne and I am have a problem.

It's a salty problem. A full-flavored, crunchy, calorie-dense problem. The problem comes in foil bags in multiple varieties, including a thick, ridged, hoity-toity variety flavored with garlic that, to my dismay, I am able to purchase at my local natural foods store with no licensure check, no drug test -in fact with no restrictions of any kind.

And Lo, at 4:00 PM today, it came to pass that I ate an entire bag of potato chips. It was not a small bag. Afterward I felt logy, dull, bloated with self-loathing. I cursed myself and my parentage. I scrapped the exciting plans I'd made for dinner: I was too full, and anyway I'd eaten two big-macs' worth of calories.

Why, oh WHY do I do this?! I told myself I'd only eat a couple of chips. I wasn't that hungry when I opened the bag, and dinner was just around the corner. After the first couple of chips, I told myself I'd only eat 17, the amount of 1 serving as articulated in the nutritional information. Then I granted myself a few more. And a few more. The next thing I knew there were only 17 chips left in the bag, plus a pile of crumbs, and I thought: What the hey?

The thing is, I am probably a more-than-typically conscientious person. I always consider the consequences of my actions; I always plan ahead; I exercise every day and make lists. So why did I eat the entire bag? Because I cower before the awesome power of the potato chip, for starters. But more importantly: Because I am human.

See, I've come to believe that a disproportionate number of our societal failures spring from the wrong-headed notion, hatched somewhere back in the Enlightenment, that humans behave rationally. Sometimes we do. Often we don't. Yet, for centuries, economic, social, and political policymakers have assumed we are rational units. This misapprehension has contributed to social dysfunction, the looming public-health and environmental crises, and even the recent economic downturn.

(People don't use 403bs because the plans are opt-in, not opt-out. People drive 10 miles for gas that is 10 cents cheaper. In their SUVs. And people will -oh yes they will- take out mortgages they cannot afford.)

Which is one of the reasons I'm so excited about the burgeoning field of behavioral economics. I haven't yet read Duke professor Dan Ariely's new book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, but I plan to. Publicized snippets of Ariely's research have already disabused us of the notion that bigger bonuses equal better performance, or that longer cash-in windows mean more people redeem gift cards. Future research will demonstrate, I'm sure, that I'd better leave the damn potato chips at the store. Behind glass. In the care of armed guards.

I HEART YOU! Shhhhhh.

If you are in your twenties, verbose, and afflicted with subclinical OCD, chances are you've played Word Twist. You know Word Twist: the stubborn, brilliant little Facebook anagram game that guzzles your time and refuses to apologize for repeated use of the word "rhea." And if you've played Word Twist, chances are you've seen that banner ad, the one that says:

1 (ONE) OF YOUR FRIENDS HAS A SECRET CRUSH ON YOU. CLICK TO FIND OUT WHO.

O sneaky banner ad! O sly, sordid bit of internet business! To what sorry electronic rabbit hole does a click really take you, and how many people have fallen down it? I picture the banner ad as a will-o-the-wisp, luring fascinated followers into the fens.

The idea that someone you know has a crush on you! And furthermore, that it's secret! It's a warm, trembling, luminescent thought, just the kind of thing to traipse after into the swamp. We all crave notice, acceptance, and love, and what's more tempting than being informed you don't have to look for it anymore? Someone thinks you're the best thing since sliced bread and that person is IS UNDER YOUR VERY NOSE.

So it's a cynical enterprise. Yet, the more I goggle at the bobbing blue letters, the more I'm convinced that it's also an innocent enterprise, a fumbling forward from a place of profound naivete, where "crush" means hearts and flowers and fade to black.

What does "crush" really mean? Like "love," it's one of those words which looks unitary but fractures, upon closer inspection, into a million shiny pieces. Our emotions are fickle, feckless things: liking may flare into obsession, obsession may die back down to indifference, indifference may kindle into lust in the course of a year or a month or a day. Sustained, frustrated desire is rare, and is very seldom undiluted by anger. A person may want nothing from his crush, or only a little, or everything, or too much. Or maybe the crush will turn out to be vampiric, too pallid to bear exposure to the light of day.

And what if you did click through? What if the banner ad were magically genuine, revealing the name and face of a person who had whatever a "crush" is on you? What would you do with that information? Are you single, married, divorced, dating? Is your friend single, married, divorced, dating? Whoever the person was, your relationship would undergo reshuffling. You'd have to make a decision, to weigh the options, to speak up or shut up, kiss or duck or walk a fine line. The result could be good, bad, or indifferent -but in all cases it would be effortful.

Knowledge is power. Power is responsibility. Responsibility is a pain in the butt.

Bliss

Whenever you make a purchase, you've let want spill over the lip of whatever contained it: penury, tight-fistedness, common sense. In those cases in which the container was rational thought, you end up with crap you don't need and don't use: orange go-go boots, for instance, or a bright pink trench coat.

Not that I know anyone who purchased the above-mentioned items.

Very rarely, the thing you purchased so dramatically improves your life that it becomes indispensable. How did you live without it? Your life was a wasteland, a tundra, a pit of despair. Then along comes a little white box called the Marsona Travel Sound Conditioner, for which you forked over an egregious $70 online, and all is sweetness and light!

What does this miracle device do, you ask? It fits in a carry-on suitcase and makes noise. White noise. A lot of white noise, obscuring the grinding of the elevator cables, the barking of dogs, the shrieking of 300 pre-pubescent cheerleaders. Sleep on the road is without price.

Rite of Spring

Box Lunch

At 11:30 AM I walk into lunch duty, where my job is to make kids be quiet. This is the obverse of my real job, which is to get kids to talk. The cafeteria is dark and too warm and smells of old chicken. I say the children need to put their heads down on the tables; they need to be quiet.

A knot of Kindergarten boys are disputing amongst themselves. I walk over to sort things out and they tug at my arm and the bottom of my shirt. They want me to know that Darius's daddy died. Darius tells me he went to the funeral yesterday; he wants Mark to stop laughing. Mark says he isn't laughing. Mark's father is also dead. Tyrone says Darius's father was shot, just like Tyrone's father. And David's father was shot, too, in front of him in the car when he was two! The boys are excited. They are finding common ground.

I say I'm so sorry. I say the children need to put their heads down on the tables. They need to be quiet.