Do you know what date it is today?
Do you know what date it is today? March 17th. That’s right, St Patrick’s Day. But I’m not going to write about that. I’ll let those good folks enjoy their pints wherever they’ve decided to enjoy them.
Yesterday I was checking the expiry date on the meats in the meats section (yeah, I’m one of those chosen ones) and it struck me that the dates were sort of meaningless, because I didn’t know what day of the month it was. So, almost without thinking I asked the person perusing meats next to me. She said: “Oh, good question. I don’t know. Let me check my phone.” I could have done that, I’m thinking, not to mention my Fitbit Ionic glued to my wrist. But I let the woman fumble and rattle her purse for her phone and a few minutes later I find out the date. I thank heartily, then happy-on count the days until expiry on the packages of meat I want to buy.
Later on we were looking for series and episodes we’d missed from what we love to watch and I realized that my spouse was under the impression it was March 19th. “Or something like that.”
This morning I asked fifteen people. And it’s not even an ordinary day. Obviously none of them was Irish. They knew it’s Saturday, but no clue about the actual date. Most of them found yet another reason to check their phones.
There’s so much thrown at us on a daily basis — news, tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram, Scribophile, Medium, check, check, check. Somehow, it feels like I’m floating in a bubble bouncing all over the place in a mass of information, true or fake. There’s no real ground to it. Then the planning, the chores, the kids, the routine, the job, the entertainment, multitasking, go, go, go… In the midst of it all we don’t know what date it is.
Copyright © 2018 by Georgiana Petec. All rights reserved.
