Where the heck is Al Gore when you need him?
When we learned that the 2000 political candidate who “used to be the next president of the United States” made a film warning of the imminent demise of the earth due to global warming, we assumed Al had taken a much-needed break from his other major tasks of inventing the Internet and possibly tube socks. The documentary made a brief appearance at the local cinema but was here and gone before many of us, myself included, had an opportunity to see it.
Although “An Inconvenient Truth” received high marks from film critics, global warming continues to be disputed among scientists, i.e. whether the observed heating of our planet has been induced by human activity or if it’s a natural shift in climatic conditions due to a heavy cloud of testosterone spotted looming over Texas.
Even on my best days I don’t tend to think like a scientist – especially after last week’s heat wave when all my brain cells melted and fused together. I won’t surmise that the record-setting heat was caused by global warming; we’re all weary of hearing reasons why it’s hot. Suffice to say that extreme temperatures like 114 and 111 are expected in, say, Death Valley, but not here in our little corner of Santa Clara Valley. I mean, I’ve cooked roasts in lower temperatures! So with the inconvenient truth of Mr. Gore’s documentary being perilous terrain indeed, I’ll instead venture a guess that we routinely encounter a plethora of common, everyday truths that tend to be, well…inconvenient.
For instance:
Have you noticed how the distance from your hands to your feet seems to increase exponentially every year past middle age? It’s true that bending over just isn’t as easy as it used to be, and one day you find yourself buying socks that are easy to slip on until you finally realize that, tragically, tying your athletic shoes has now become its own workout.
Or perhaps you’re a woman who yearns to have long, beautiful nails but your own are so fragile that they break when coming into contact with a dust particle. The truth is that being born with flimsy nails on our hands translates to a lifetime of stubby, broken fingernails, whereas the fun task of toenail trimming requires the use of linoleum cutters.
And what about the old receipts from Jack-in-the-Box or sticky notes where you wrote down your measurements, the amount of your overdrawn bank balance, or the address of the fancy canine salon, Spa D’Rover, where they charged you a month’s salary to clean the dog’s teeth? The truth is that these unhelpful scraps of paper will follow you through two purse changes, but last year’s W2 form is nowhere to be seen on April 15.
Then there’s the day you decide that all the old stuff in the hall closet is junk and you haul it off to the flea market. Suddenly your youngest is rooting through that same closet looking for the Richard Nixon mask you bought in 1975 because at school he’s just been cast as the leading character in “Watergate – the Play.” The truth is, no matter how trivial the item or how many years it’s lain idle and forgotten, the minute you dispose of it is the minute that immediately precedes the time when you urgently need it again.
And I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you that even if you play it eight bazillion times, it’s true you’ll never win the lottery, but when you’re tagged for jury duty, your name is the first one to be pulled out of the hat.
Or the inconvenient but true fact that no lock is secure enough to keep out crooks if they really want to get in. This applies to the complete criminal spectrum from cat burglars to computer hackers to serial killers and is evidenced by cheerful news interviews from death row with menacing guys like Louie-the-Leg-Breaker who brag, “Yeah, they installed this $30,000 security system. Figured it out in 20 seconds. They’ll never find the body ’cause it’s in a million pieces.”
And, finally, it’s true that every year of your age past 40 the phone company reduces the height and breadth of the print in your phone book by one font size until, I’m guessing by the year 2018, the print will disappear altogether, which will be mighty inconvenient.
In the meantime, let’s find Al Gore and ask him to get hold of a large federal grant to study why South Valley suddenly felt a little too much like Death Valley last week. Because if that’s not the truth, I don’t know what is.
Gale Hammond is a 23-year Morgan Hill resident. Reach her at
Ga*********@ao*.com
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