Alien

I’m not from your world. I’m from a place where there were no blue M&Ms…but we had tan ones. I’m from a time when a Mr. Potato Head toy required a real potato. In my world, a “King Size Coke” was a whopping 12 ounces…and that was the biggest bottle you could buy. A man would come to our house before daylight and leave fresh milk on the porch. There were three channels on television, and you had to actually get off the couch to change from one channel to another. The movie theater only had one screen…but the movie changed every two or three days. And once the movie had played your town, you would never have another chance to see it again. In the place I come from, you could write a check that didn’t even have your name pre-printed on it.
It wasn’t all good in that world. Children would run outside and dash through the white cloud of DDT when the truck came around spraying for mosquitoes. There were bomb shelters in backyards. There was lead paint and asbestos and polio and measles and iron lungs and people smoked everywhere. I am from another world.
Don’t get me wrong, though; I’m no anti-technology Luddite. I like having my remote control and my computer with wireless internet and my dvd collection. I’m just saying that things have changed, that’s all.
And that’s what we call “progress.” Hardly anything is the same as it was when I was a kid…or when my great-grandfather was a kid. I can only think of one thing that hasn’t changed: the love and grace and forgiveness of God. There’s been no progress in that field for, oh, two thousand years or so. None has been needed.
It’s good to know that Somebody got it right the first time.