Technology and plants

Technology and plants require that I provide them with some kind of unidentifiable, constant—yet very hands-off—attention.

That is why technology, plants, and I do not get along.

It's like this. You buy a plant. (Or, in my case, are given a plant.)

You think that all you have to do is water it and put it in the sun.

And that's where the plant gets you. It stares up at you, looking at you with its planty little leaves, hoping with its passive-aggressive chlorophyll-laden psyche, that you will not only put it in the sun, and give it water but that you will also:
• Think, at some point, to re-pot it
• Consider giving it nutrients other than water
• Prevent it from being blown off the porch in high winds while you're at work
• Buy it a nicer pot

And the list goes on.

And technological devices are exactly the same.

Take the iPod, for example. (Thanks to Husband, who stopped the blinky red eye. Music is gone, though.)

You buy the technological device. You bring it home. You become attached to it, but assume that, like a plant, it will need only two sources of sustenance: electricity and the occasional software update.

But no.

You become ever more dependent on the device. It worms its way into your life, slowly, like some kind of codependent bacteria. And suddenly, the device is expecting more than electricity and software. It wants.....peripherals.

Just like your plant.

And then the 40-mile-an-hour gusts blow the plant off your deck during an early and possibly global-warming-generated cold front, or say, your new sassy exec-u-bag resembling a doctor's bag pops open and your technological device rolls end-over-end down the stairs.

And that's it.

The plant is dead. The device blinks at you with its evil red eye. And you vow to stick to what you know:

Shoes.