Sometimes he lobs comments at things that other family members say at the table, and he takes particular delight in buttonholing me. Such was the case last night, when Mrs. KintlaLake and I were talking idly about my old and seldom-used GPS unit.
"So whaddaya gonna do when the satellites go down?" he grumbled while twirling his spaghetti.
"I'll use paper maps, of course, and a compass if one's handy," I replied quickly. "See, it's unwise to rely on technology, but personally I have no problem with learning how to use it."
"Hmph." He felt the dig and stopped twirling.
I reminded him of something that happened not long after my family and I moved in, a day that I'd innocently dead-bolted the door between the attached garage and the house. It seemed a reasonable thing to do when leaving the place unoccupied.
When my in-laws returned from the grocery that day, they used the electric garage-door opener to raise the overhead door but were unable to get into the house -- because neither carries a key.
"So what happens if you come back and the power's out?" I asked.
"Whaddaya mean?" He wasn't making the connection.
"How would you get into this house without electricity?"
There was a pause while the light dawned. "I guess we wouldn't."
I hesitate to chalk up this sort of thing to his advanced age or incurable narrow-mindedness. His unwillingness to think things through is simply expected now.
Not long ago he popped off about "the damned casino issue," otherwise known as statewide Ballot Issue 3. If Ohio voters approve the measure at the polls today, it'd clear the way for casino gambling in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and nearby Columbus."Oh, you mean the jobs issue," I responded, leaning on independent studies projecting that the four casinos would generate 34,000 temporary and permanent jobs, plus $1 billion dollars in revenue and $500 million in taxes annually.
"No, it's about casinos and I'll vote against it. It's a bad deal for Ohio," he said, parroting TV commercials telling him that all of the money would go to out-of-state casino operators -- TV commercials funded by those very same out-of-state casino operators.
When I pressed him for more, he explained that he didn't feel that it was right "to set up a way for poor people to gamble away money they can't afford to lose."
By that logic, I thought, presumably he also opposes alcohol, tobacco, eBay, QVC, Wal-Mart and individual investing.
"The way I see it," I said, "part of the price of life in a free society is allowing some of our fellow citizens to make unwise choices -- to make choices that we wouldn't make ourselves."
"You really think this is a free society?" he shot back.
"Not if we keep voting against it, it's not."
When a touch-screen ballot machine asked me this morning for my vote on Issue 3, I didn't hesitate -- I pressed "YES." It's about jobs.
More than that, perhaps, it's about actually thinking things through.
