So, I’m not at home.
My family is on a forced interment inside the bowels of the fourth
largest city in the U.S. We’re here dealing with, and trying to work
through, some pretty serious health issues of my husband’s. I’m only
sharing that to emphasize that we’d rather, at this juncture, be
pretty much anywhere else right now: with Home of course ranking
number one, and “tied nekkid to an ant hill“ ranked just above where
we are.
Being trapped here, we’ve had to Do As the Natives Do: deal with the
noise, the traffic, the tap water that stinks of seaweed, and the most
horrifying City Routine of all - the watching of network morning
television.
Yes, during the hours that I am normally outside feeding and watering
critters and (depending on the day and the season) getting rained on,
shivering, sweating, being bitten by zillions of skeeters OR relishing
a perfect day, breathing deeply the scents of wildflowers, good earth,
or any variety of poop, giving kisses on the nosie, being chased by
rabid roos or getting stepped on and mashed against the stall wall
(we’ll assume by accident), I was missing some vital information… AND
I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT.
Some things I’m now hearing are foreign to me due to location - we’re
flat not-big-city folks. It never occurred to me that I needed one
perfect Little Black Dress; how name brand fashions could be acquired
on The Cheap (although their version of “cheap” for one outfit usually
totals my entire family’s clothing budget for a year or so); why a
certain type of footwear is considered Must-Have, even though to my
hayseed eyes they look unsuitable and far too flimsy for navigating
muddy terrain more than once.
A lot of things I’m now hearing are foreign to me due to my heretofore
unknown social deprivation regarding the world of television. Here’s
what I foolishly thought: television is something you watch if there’s
nothing to do, nothing to read, nowhere to go and no one to talk to.
Therefore I don’t know most of the morning show guests:
reality(?)-show participants, sports figures, pretty much any musician
or weekly-series character.
But nothing – NOTHING - has blown me completely out of my socks like
finding out that, despite earning quite a bit more money than I’ll
ever hope to, and despite navigating adroitly through the maze of
civilization every day, and despite working at highly technical and
complex occupations, city folk have no earthly idea of what they
should eat.
Really.
Just the other day, the teaser for a following segment started out
with, “Americans eat way too much salt. If we could reduce our intake
of salt by just 10%, we could prevent 10,000 heart attacks every
year.”
Once into the meat of the matter, we learned that Americans really
aren’t that heavy-handed with the salt shakers - a mere 6% of our salt
intake comes via the shaker onto cooked foods at the table, but that
77% of our salt intake comes directly contained in all the processed
foods we eat.
Here’s where it got weird.
When the Expert D’jour was asked what we could do to
rectify this situation, I shook my head in smiling disbelief since it
was so obvious.
