This is a picture of my father from the 1920’s; I remember him remarking on the “Old Timers” in town telling stories about fighting Indians on the frontier. Seeing that picture makes me think of that boy listening to old men, just as other boys would one day listen to him. Heaven knows what all they passed on.

It makes me think of just lifespans in general. Well, for instance, there’s mine. My youth that matched the years numbered in the picture above is also long gone. And that’s all right. I like having these links to previous eras. I look back at these pictures and somehow I remember a time before I could possibly remember and blend it into my memories. And, in doing so, I feel the responsibility and desire to be kinder than I by nature want to be.

I was using Firefox for one reason or another and when I clicked on a link, nothing happened. So I clicked again. And I went to system preferences and network and found out my net wasn’t working. Whatever to do? I just decided I would stroll over on the nano pathways to the game Machinarium.  I will not bore anyone with the plot of the game; just let it suffice to say I guide a little robot through a bunch of maneuvers.

This morning I found my robot in a bathroom and if he looked down the toilet, which was in a tower and not unlike a “long drop” outhouse, he saw a bomb fastened to the building. I will skip all the little activity that led to this: his hanging by a roll of toilet paper down by the bomb.

Now I can accept all the other tasks he has performed, but, gollygee, I KNOW that toilet paper is not going to support his weight, let alone take the added strain of his swinging toward the bomb. This bothered me more than disarming the bomb, more than climbing down into a fountain and through a pipe. I believe my robot can stretch his metallic body upward like a telescoping pipe, but I cannot believe toilet paper is that strong. I brooded over it.

Then it hit me. It wasn’t toilet paper; it was a roll of cloth from one of the old-fashioned hand drying devices. It had to be a hand dryer because brown sludge came out of the faucet and you would need to wipe it off your hands. I’ll bet if I go back and capture a screen shot and zoom in, I will not see any perforation marks in paper. It just has to be cloth.

I could put my mind to other endeavors and problems. Imagine a Miss America contestant forgoing “a cure for cancer” or “working for world peace” in order to answer, “I’d like to know for sure if it was cloth or paper.”