What's your favorite modern convenience?

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My problem with time machines is that if I go back in time, I would encounter times when people bathed once a month and there was no indoor plumbing. What would you most miss if modern conveniences were taken away?--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), November 20, 1999

Answers

Indoor plumbing. Definitely.--Al.

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), November 20, 1999.

I'd have to go with electricity. Nearly all our modern conveniences would be useless without it.

It'd be easier using chamber pots and taking cold baths than doing without electricity. Still, getting a bath, without those pipes that bring the water in? Wow, that would be a job. COLD would be the least of it.

-- Joan Lansberry (gallae@casagrande.com), November 21, 1999.


I'd have to go with electricity, too. Our power was out for almost five days during El Nino a few years ago. My mom was getting depressed. The neighbors all had power, except for a little pocket of one block (of course, our block). It was cold. We couldn't cook or read or get warm. And there was nothing to do -- no TV, no computers, no lights. I kept going into rooms and turning on switches out of habit. I called the electric company, but their phone was constantly busy. I called a friend who called someone in the legislature; they couldn't help, either. My friend suggested I take some bright neon paper and make big signs explaining the problem, that my mother was elderly, that we still had no power after five days, and just where out house was. My teenage son ran into the power company like a little commando, plastering the signs all over their lobby, taping them to their bulletproof glass windows. The security guard said, "hey, you have to take those down." My son said, "I'm a kid and you can't make me," and ran out of the building. Our power was on in a matter of hours, and my mom received an apology from the power company.

Sunshyn

-- Sunshyn (sunshyndream@aol.com), November 21, 1999.


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