There was a time, not long ago, although it now feels like it existed in sepia tones, when dinner was just dinner. A plate, a fork, maybe a passive-aggressive comment about who didn’t unload the dishwasher, and if you were lucky, a moment of connection wedged somewhere between the carbs and the complaints.
Enter the concept of innovation. Or, as it’s increasingly known, “please God make the stock price go up.”
Somewhere in a sleek conference room, a group of very well-paid adults decided that what pasta sauce has been missing all these years is surveillance. Not flavor. Not less sodium. Not a jar that doesn’t require the grip strength of a CrossFit champion. No. What we needed was a device. A recording device. At dinner. Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood marinara.
Because nothing says “family bonding” quite like, “Hold that thought, sweetie, let me make sure the sauce is capturing this.”
This little technological garnish is being sold as a way to bring families together. To encourage storytelling. To keep phones away from the table. Which is adorable. Truly. It’s like saying, “I’m going to help you quit caffeine by introducing you to cocaine.” The logic is creative.
If the goal is to be present, to actually be with one another, then why in the name of all things al dente are we introducing yet another device into the sacred, shrinking space of human connection?
We’ve reached a point where silence makes us itchy. Where a pause in conversation feels like a system error. Where we are so afraid of missing a moment that we’ve decided to record all of them, presumably so we can never listen to them again but feel very accomplished knowing they exist.
And let’s talk about the elephant in the roor rather the microphone on the table.
We are being asked to trust that this device, lovingly co-branded by a pasta sauce company and a storytelling nonprofit, is simply there for the warm fuzzies. That it won’t “listen” in any meaningful way beyond your Uncle Joe’s retelling of the same story he’s told since 1998. That it won’t pick up on keywords. That it won’t, I don’t know, subtly nudge your future purchasing habits because you mentioned “garlic bread” three times in one sitting.
Sure. Of course. And I have a jar of completely sentient-free marinara to sell you.
Here’s the thing. Connection does not require a gadget. Unity does not come with a user manual. And presence isn’t something you can outsource to a device that needs charging.
If you want phones off the table, you can take them off the table. No app required. No firmware update. Just the radical, almost rebellious act of saying, “Hey, let’s try being here. Together. Unrecorded.”
Because the beauty of those moments has always been their impermanence. The half-finished stories. The laughter that comes out wrong. The arguments that start over nothing and somehow end in dessert. They don’t need to be captured to matter. In fact, capturing them might be the very thing that flattens them.
Not everything needs to be optimized. Not everything needs to be monetized. And not everything, despite what the market may whisper in its caffeinated, erratic way, needs a gadget.
So here’s a thought. A modest proposal, if you will.
Let the sauce be sauce.
Let the dinner be dinner.
Let the stories live and breathe and disappear like they’re supposed to.
And maybe, just maybe, when the jar starts listening that’s when we say stop.
Categories: Culture, current events, family, food, identity, mental health, Psychology, society
psychologistmimi 
Oh Dear Lord an Effort to Can Oral Tradition Using
A Can Shaped Recording Device through the Spaghetti
Sauce Manufacturer Prego Yep working Hand in Can
With the Non-Profit StoryCorps Organization that has
Been Preserving American Stories from Everyday Folks
Ever since 2003 and ever since 2005 in Weekly Broadcasts
of the Stories of Common Folk on the NPR Public Broadcast
to the Oral Tradition Tune of 645 thousand efforts archived
in the Library of Congress Perhaps before traditional Oral Tradition
Goes Extinct
Or More appropriately
put transforms into Modern
Tik Tok Avenues of Constant
Distraction for Focus and Attention
Span Limited to somewhere around 40 Seconds
Additionally Seeking Fame and Fortune even More
than Warm Human Lifetime Connections for Real
Health and Wellbeing From Cradle to Grave as such
Far Far away from the Old Dinner Table and Living Room
Conversations and even further away from the Ancestral
Dance that was the Most Prevalent and Used Device to tale
the Village Story Then Have i exceeded 40 seconds of reading Now
Yes for others hehe Yet not for me as i can go on all day long Yet there
Was a Day Before at Age 4 that i couldn’t even put words together for an Oral
Tradition Sentence Yet Amazed then at How my Elders sitting at the Dining Table
or Living Room Where Living was actually Shared and Delivered in Oral Tradition
Totally Immersing me in all the Sensory and Emotional Details of their Stories Putting
me Into Whatever Situation
They Were Free Verse
Poetically Describing
In Actual Emotional
Song of Verbal Words
Wow! Just Wow! Truly
Amazed i couldn’t even imagine
Being able to do that not at 4 not
at 40 and Not Even until 53 far away
in Decades after that Yet i thought to myself
Why am i the only one who couldn’t tale stories
among my Elders well the Hawk doesn’t Fall Out of
the Sky and the Monkey doesn’t fall Out of the Tree
Cause they Practice Their Craft of Flight and Climb
Every Day without fail to Practically Taking their Last
Flight
and Climb
Of Life so Yes i’ve been
Practicing this for 15.6 Million
Words transformed into EPiC Long
Form Poetry on this Fancy Dancy iMac
Digital Writing Device Yet in the Real World
Whereas i Rarely had even a word More than Two
Yes Just ‘Working Working’ when folks asked me what i had
Been doing through 33 Years of Work in the Real World i am able
Verbally in Song of Words to Do What my Elders Did It Just took me a while
to overcome both the Autistic Word Blocks and Environmental Road Blocks
Like Stuck in a TV through Most of my Leisure hours or a mindless Video Game
Just Never
Practicing
being more than
an audience and
spectator of Real Life
Anyway this device has
worked for me
With
SMiLes
And Yes the StoryCorps organization Now is only
Selling 100 of these recording devices for 20 Bucks
As Reported by the “Online MSN News Source”
As It’s Obviously Just a Promotional Scheme to
get donations for the Non-Profit Organization
And of course Stories too i checked out the Website
and was actually tempted to click on some of the Stories
Yet Dear Lord
i already Read Blogs
That Function the Same
Way with the Written Word
However Text only Relates
About 7 Percent of the Full Human Connection
And Verbal Language Doesn’t Relate Nearly as
Much as the Non-Verbal Language of a Real Flesh and
Blood Head to Toe Dance of Life Together Around a Campfire
Transcending Solo
Life unto
A Force Much
Greater than only one
Voice Yes the Force of Together…
It takes 2 to 3 Minutes for the average
human being to read the 618 Words above
It takes me a few seconds yet i Have a whole lot of practice
The Dance Provides the Attention Span and Focus the Lit
Up Screen Generates Dopamine for focus too it was hard
For me to read more than a Page in my Youth of rather Severe ADHD…
A Lot of the issue
Was Environmental
Some of the issue was Genetics
Yet there are many ways to adapt
to both the Nature and Nurture of Functional Limitations..:)
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Is there ANYTHING they won’t try to monetize?
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