The avalanche of technology that has inundated every nook and cranny of our world over the course of my lifetime is a bit overwhelming. Most of it was intended to make our lives simpler but as Randy Travis sang, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Paved with good intentions and littered with obsolete electronic devices and their shiny “you really need me” packaging.

Most of this technology is forced upon us and we are forced to learn and adapt. Learn and adapt for three weeks and then learn and adapt to the new best thing since sleep number beds and sliced bread. Sliced bread, compliments of Otto Frederick Rohwedder circa 1928. If your old enough to remember when sliced bread came out your probably too old to remember.

I wonder what drove Otto to invent a bread slicer? Did he lack the manual dexterity to properly slice bread with a knife leaving him to be mercilessly mocked during lunch breaks for his misshaped sandwiches and nicked and cut fingers? Perhaps he suffered from aichmophobia, a morbid fear of sharp things, and grew tired of having to slice bread via judo chop. Or maybe he was just lazy.

Whatever his reason we can now reach into a plastic bag, past the first few slices of course, and pull out a perfectly calculated cut of carbohydrate and slather it with whatever makes our lips smack and stomachs smile. Ketchup and mayonnaise, braunschweiger, peanut butter and bananas, SPAM, pimento loaf, or any other variety and combination of mystery meats and condiments you can rustle up.

With the exhausting chore of slicing bread a thing of the past the people of 1928 found themselves with an extra fourteen seconds of time to do as they pleased. Most spent those fourteen seconds lamenting about how great sliced bread was.

So it goes with most new time and labor saving thingamajigs. We have to invest large amounts of time and effort to learn how to use whatever it is we are made to think we can’t live without.

Do you know how long it took me to master the rotary dial telephone? About as long as it took to dial a number with lots of nines and zero’s. Do you know how long it took me to master the iPhone my employer thought I needed? I’m in the second month of my kids daily tutorial so I’ll keep you posted.

If the time it takes to effectively utilize a time saving device elapses the actual time it supposedly saves which direction have we traveled in time?

I once had such a time travel experience where one of me sat down to figure out how to install and use a mapping program on my phone while the other me grabbed a map from my desk drawer, packed a small nutrient dense lunch (bacon, stick of butter, two licorice whips and a berry burst juice box), gave my dog a flea and tick treatment, loaded the same dog up and drove 37 miles into the hills, hiked 27 hours uphill against the wind with nary a thought of Chapstick, drove back 37 miles, unloaded the dog, removed 48 wood ticks from the same dog, had a beer, round about two chunks of beef jerky, a handful of smoked almonds and watched an episode of M.A.S.H..

That’s when I heard the other me produce an agitated whimper of discontent as he peered helplessly into his handheld electronic black hole awaiting the download of yet another hollow promise of excitement, joy, and utter amazement.

I just ignored me and with chapped lips, sore feet and Hawkeye in the middle of some controversial lifesaving procedure I drifted off to sleep dreaming of a time when sliced bread was something and we enjoyed spending time more than futilely attempting to save it.