By Jack Godbey

Columnist

I remember a story I read sometime in the blurry matrix of my childhood about the boy who cried wolf. In fact, he cried wolf so many times when there was no wolf at all that folks stopped reacting when he cried. I was reminded of this story recently when dealing with a coworker. She’s the type where nothing is planned, and then suddenly, everything seems to be an emergency. She’ll send out emails labeled emergency every day only to find that it’s not an emergency. The fax machine isn’t working? Who cares? I haven’t sent a fax since 1998. What, the Internet is out? Good. It sounds like I may have time for a nap. These things seem important to some, but they are not important to me at all. Now, if someone eats my bologna sandwich that I brought for lunch, now that’s important.

I recall when I was very young; it seemed important to my mother for me to stop using the restroom in my diaper and start to pee in the bathroom instead. While it seemed very important to her, I wasn’t that interested. I already had a good system in place where I go to the bathroom in my diaper anytime. I felt like it and like clockwork, someone would come and change my diaper for me. Now, I’m supposed to get up out of my highchair, put down my G.I. Joe action figure, and go into another room just to pee? I don’t think so. That sounds like a bad deal for me. I’ve been upset about this ever since. It’s been 54 years since I was convinced that getting up to go to the bathroom was important. If I could find a diaper made by Levi’s in a size 40, I’d probably wear one now. Come to think of it, it always seemed very important to my family when I was a toddler for me to know the sounds that every animal made. Every time we would see an animal, someone would impersonate the animal until I repeated it. Why was it so important for me to remember that cows say moo?

It seems like a lot of people currently think that a certain football game is very important. I’ll admit that I may have ignored the clues. I saw the giant display at the grocery store of cases of soda stacked in the shape of a football. However, it wasn’t important to me, so I ignored it. I heard something on the news about “The big game,” but I tuned it out. Then, I had a friend ask me what I was doing this weekend. When I responded with, “Household chores,” his face twisted in all sorts of directions, and he said, “On Superbowl weekend”? To be honest, I didn’t really know or care that it was Super Bowl weekend. So, while the game is very important to some, to others like me, it’s not important at all. I heard one person say that they didn’t like football but watched it because of the commercials. What? I spend my time trying to avoid the commercials on TV. It seems that this is the one time when advertisers stop making those annoying pharmaceutical commercials and actually put some thought into what they are doing. It seems that once a year, it becomes important to them to do a good job. The rest of the year, it’s not important to them at all. Sounds a lot like me.