You know the ones I mean: the stories that at first make you think, Hmmm, that’s interesting…and a second later make you realize, Hmmm, who cares? Even though you’re aware of the fact that these news pieces won’t affect your life one iota, somehow they’re quirky enough to drag you in and take up who knows how many minutes of your time.
Take The New York Times article about a study that determined that everybody veers left while walking. Okay, fascinating (well, mildly fascinating), but so what? Who cares? What is the piece going to tell me, that I should only pass walkers on the right? If I try to pass on the left, I face the danger of a collision and have to trade insurance information? I laugh to myself about these things before I read it – I read it being the operative words.
And how about the Time magazine piece that informs us that people are talking less? Not my barber, I immediately inwardly chuckle…or the trash-talkers in my basketball league. As one might expect, the article points out that, for one thing, the decline is partly attributed to young people communicating by texting rather than talking…but who cares? I don’t understand half of what they’re saying anyway. So why do I read it? Because it’s there.
Oh, here’s a real out-of-left-fielder. A piece in Travel & Leisure that tells us that we can’t wear flip-flops or sandals in Cinque Terre, Italy – if we dare to expose our tootsies, we could be fined up to €2,500, which is equivalent to about $2,900 in U.S. dollars. Once again, amusing piece of info, but really…am I planning to vacation in a town I’ve never even heard of? Of course not, but I read it anyway. Maybe because I love Italy. Or hate flip-flops.
And just when I think I‘ve heard it all, I realize that I’ll never achieve that rarified status…especially when I see the article in The New Yorker about being able to now get sushi in Omaha, Nebraska. Now I know Nebraska is the home of beef, so I can’t imagine why anyone in Omaha would long for sushi…with the possible exception of the 1,100 Japanese residents and possibly some urbanites visiting Warren Buffett. I really don’t care, either. Since I have no great love for sushi and no intentions of ever visiting Omaha, I’m totally uninterested. But, as you might expect by now, I read the piece. Don’t ask me why.
Finally (for now anyway), I stumbled on a New York Times article that informed me that dates are now the hottest fruit. That’s right, dates, interestingly enough. The first thing I thought of was that I, for one, haven’t recently heard anyone say, “I’m not going to that restaurant anymore, they don’t have dates”…or “You have to try Leon’s, they have great dates.” Now, I have nothing against dates (fresh ones are nice, especially with prosciutto), but I’m certainly not interested enough in them to plow through an entire article. But, that’s right, I did. And you know what? Like all of the aforementioned pieces, it was a welcome break from most of today’s news.
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