Easy Seems to be the Hardest Word

Why, being the post agrarian society we are do we need to spring forward and fall back? I think this is simply ridiculous and should cease immediately. We should stay on standard time and not spring forward anymore. Who is going to care? What special interest is possibly being served by this function?

We already made it even more of a pain in the ass to change the time when we extended daylight saving time by a week or two further into the fall, thereby rendering obsolete all the clocks that automatically do it for you on a predetermined date! Now we have to go back and unchange the clocks that changed prematurely and then go back and change them manually on the correct date! Convenient!

O.K., I admit there is a grand total of one clock in my house that automatically changes on the wrong preset date and it is a simple one button affair to change it back. So I am not losing whole chunks of my life in service to my small appliances. The point is producer of products believe we want all this convenience and their efforts to please us are causing our lives to become more complicated and less fulfilling. It could all stop if we wanted it to. Only in America could an innocent convenience feature actually rob us of time and make extra work for us.

Explain, you demand! I shall, I reply! Time was when you could get in a car by turning a key in the door, then use the same key, or a different key on the same key ring in the ignition tumbler, turn it and voila you were in business. Now I have a car with a key fob shaped perfectly so as to get stuck in every pocket I put it into, with small non-distinct buttons ensuring a one in four chance of popping the trunk or setting off the panic alarm rather than unlocking the door. I imagine the point was to hasten entry into the vehicle when your hands were full or in inclement weather. A real time saver. I dare you to use the fob with gloves on like you may have to do occasionally in Michigan or to remember which button is which on a dark night since the thing isn't backlit. Not to mention the social faux pas in certain circles of inviting someone into your Mercury Grand Marquis, (Mafia staff car of choice 25 years running), by popping the trunk. "Hey, Joey, let's you can me go get a beer... No Joey, wait, come back, I hit the wrong button, I promise!" All this fails to mention the actuator for the lock on the inside of the driver's door of my car has literally broken off its mooring and now I have to unlock the driver door in the old timey way by using the key. That means my car is broken even though it's not... I'm confused should I pay the $300 to fix it? If I am taking passengers with me, or need to access the car through any other doors, I have to use the button and the key. Convenient!

My wife's car takes convenience to a whole new level. It doesn't have a key at all! You simply have the bulky oddly shaped fob in for pocket and touch the door handle and four times out of five the door unlocks for you. The fifth time was in the rain with the groceries and you pulled on the handle faster than the car could recognize you which means you now get to wait five minutes while it thinks about letting you in... Or, alternately you can fish out the key fob which you have placed in the nether-est of nether regions since you are never supposed to need it and hit the buttons manually. Convenient!

Once ensconced in the car, you will find a push button start, which is cool, though I fail to understand how it is any easier or faster than turning a key. The large fob, shaped like a 13/5 scale vitamin pill is now in your pocket and feels like a breach baby while you drive, instead of being in the ignition where it is not poking you in your nether regions. So, you say, take the key out and put it in the cup holder so it isn't poking you in your privacy zone! Excellent idea, let's explore. Taking this tack, we get to listen to the fob and all the plastic store rewards cards rattle against each other and make repetitive noises which you should know turns me into the Incredible Hulk. Plus, upon leaving the car and attempting to lock it, you are sternly reminded via a series of beeps which in morse code say "you're an idiot" that the biometric fob is still inside the car, which I now have to reach back in and get, invariably wanging my head on the roof of the car on my way out. Now I am cold, wet, pissed off and have a concussion. Convenient!

The fob is also programmed to my wife's seat and mirror settings which were I to drive with would result in blind spots large enough for the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan to slide into unnoticed, not to mention instantaneous and permanent sciatica. Change the seat you say! Brilliant, let's explore. Each time you leave the car and come back, the seat has surreptitiously returned to it's previously torturous state requiring you to make the changes all over again, manually. This is especially convenient on errand days when you are in and out of the car a dozen times or more in the span of an hour. To compensate for the fact you are forced to drive the car with a building sized blind spot, there is a Blind Spot Information System, or BLIS as it was christened by the acronym happy marketing department of this particular car company. BLIS is one of many systems on newer cars which ostensibly take place of actually having to pay attention while driving. Activated by the turn signal, it lights up a little icon on the side mirrors and bleeps when you have try to change lanes if there is a car within say, six miles of you. It also recognizes guard rails and light posts as cars. the net effect is I simply have stopped signaling like the rest of the western world so I can drive without the goddamn car yelling at me. Convenient!

We have had the car two years and I still haven't programmed the second fob with my setting to work around these issues. Primarily because I had to pay a grad student from M.I.T. to come and do it for me the first time, and the lease is up in eleven months. It is therefore well below the cost/benefit line on my mental Venn Diagram. Another example of the cost of the convenience being too high to pay for the actual convenience. Plus I would either have to carry that fob on my car keys, creating a super bulky mess of electronic fobs and store membership cards, or go have another house key cut so I could maintain a separate but equal set of keys for the other vehicle. Brilliant! then what happens when I am at one of the dozens of stores where I am a member and I don't have my membership card?

Ford and Lexus have a system whereby they can parallel park themselves with the touch of a button. Back in the day, you didn't get a license until you could do this for yourself. I imagine soon that skill, like using a stick shift, will be extinct. Of course, most of the companies that impregnate their products with all this glam never really stop to perfect any of it. Perhaps we as consumers should recommend they create a basically perfect core product before worrying about hanging a bunch of garland and gimcrackery on in.

Emily doesn't know it yet, but her next car is a 1933 Model A Ford. It has such wonderful convenience features like pneumatic tires, electric start, synchromesh transmission and sealed headlights. What else can she ask for?