The seven percent solution

Story by John Larson, El Defensor Chieftain | Aug 3, 2023

I ran into a friend the other day and was grumbling about not having enough time in the day. He agreed, and we both grumbled and walked away wondering, “Where has the time gone?” I mean, here we are slipping into August, and it seems like the Fourth of July was just last weekend.

Oh well, it’s like Groucho Marx said: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” For those who have no idea who Groucho Marx is or was, he was also the one who said, “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

You may have guessed that one of my favorite books growing up was Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

Speaking of books – and time – with summer vacation over for the youth of Socorro and Magdalena hitting the halls last week and next, there’ll be a flurry of activity over at Walmart this weekend. If you haven’t heard, Friday through Sunday is New Mexico’s back-to-school tax-free weekend.

The state’s website has the A-Z list of non-taxed school stuff, from aerobic clothing to zip drives. And you don’t have to be going back to school to save that seven-some-odd percent. You can even get a clerical collar tax-free.

Otherwise, save on your notebooks, binders, pencils, pink erasers, and other implements of vacation destruction, not to mention the ubiquitous backpack. As a matter of fact, you can now buy a backpack that’s pre-loaded with all those items, even blunt-tip scissors.

Backpacks were not part of the back-to-school list when yours truly was going to school. The only time you saw someone with a backpack was if they were

on Army maneuvers or a Boy Scout camping trip.

Back in the 1960s, everybody made do with carrying books by hand and just those needed for homework or the next class.

Frankly, I haven’t a clue what kids carry around in their backpacks these days, but one parent said her daughter’s felt like it was full of rocks. And one can guarantee there are no slide rules inside. Slide rules have gone the way of protractors, which have been replaced by the slide rule app and the protractor app.

What I find interesting about back-to-school sales is that in their ads, they throw in other not-so-educational products like flat-screen televisions, video game consoles, headphones, smartphones, DVD players… heck, they could even slap a sticker on $200 Ray-Bans and call ‘em back-to-school aviators. Or something.

Am I overthinking this?

Anyway, when you’re doing the back-to-school shopping thing, at least try to do it locally instead of driving north. Although I would make the run to Costco in Albuquerque once every six weeks or so for things nobody carries here, each time I was there, it reconfirmed my appreciation for a small town where people don’t whizz past you at 60 miles an hour and rarely punch their horns at stoplights.

Speaking of which, I am reminded of an article a while back where a journalist went to find out what town or city was the most polite, and he did this by not moving at a traffic light when the light turned from red to green, then timing how long it would take the driver in back to honk his horn.

I don’t recall the overall comparisons, but do I remember he said that at a light in Dallas, the lady in back waited through two complete green lights before gently tapping her horn. Gently, I guess, would be the operative term.

I suppose things like hot weather or being late to get someplace need to be factored in, besides the belief that each of us knows how to drive better than everyone else on the road.

How Socorro would rate on that scale, I don’t know, but one time I sat through one green light before I just drove around the idler ahead.

Maybe that’s the whole idea of a new word I learned: niksen; it’s Dutch for doing nothing, as in, “I may want to get through this green light, but I’ll just niksen until you move.”

Niksen, according to an article I read on bbc.com, just “happens.” Like sitting idly on the porch, as I am wont to do after work. The idea of niksen, it says, is to “take conscious, considered time and energy to do activities like gazing out of a window or sitting motionless.”

In other words, daydreaming, an inevitable effect of idleness, “literally makes us more creative, better at problem-solving, better at coming up with creative ideas,” the web page said.

Sounds good to me since, for that to happen, total idleness is required. Am I being lazy? Wasting time? Heck, no, I’m taking a niksen break. It’s too hot for anything else.

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