“Variety is the “Vice” of Life!”

Since I mentioned shopping yesterday, I will continue this topic today. My goodness! Shopping has become so difficult and confusing these days. Back in the “Good Ole Days’, when I had a hankering for something, I only had one choice. These days there is a plethora of varieties on things that used to consist of only 1 choice.

Permit me to illustrate. I like Milky Way bars. In the past, they were just one basic bar. Not so these days! Now on the shelf are the following: Milky Way Original (what I always get); “Milky Way Simply Caramel” (whatever that is?); “Milky Way Caramel Apple”; “Milky Way Dark Chocolate”. These are just the variations I can recall.

Reese Cups also come in various flavors these days. I just prefer the basic ones that I have always eaten. I always buy chocolate or chocolate swirl ice cream. I rarely find swirl ice cream any more. These days the store freezers are rife with all kinds of weird flavors such as “Cookie Dough”, etc., none of which appeals to my Baby Boomer taste buds in the least which were weaned on Chocolate, and Vanilla, or for the true adventurists, Neapolitan ice cream. Humph! Try to find Neapolitan ice cream these days!

I could go on with dozens of examples. It always puzzles and aggravates me why manufacturers have to keep constantly “reinventing the wheel” these days, which results in spending a lot of time trying to find the basic stuff among the crowed shelves of some weird variation of the heretofore basic products. Of course, if I’m not careful, I usually end up getting some weird variation of the basic things I prefer.

I yearn for the days when things were so much simpler. I won’t even get into the subject of modern vehicles. I used to do most all my own repairs and maintenance in the old days. Now when I raise the hood on my vehicles, I can barely see the engine with all the stuff that is attached to it now days. It is just as well, I guess, since arthritis has pretty much limited my movements in most all joints. 

Alas, when I get overwhelmed with the complexity of life these days, I go and look under the hood of a friend’s 1957 Chevy or go out to the barn and look at the engine of one of the old 1950's International tractors and remember how simple things used to be!

+++MiKe+++