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like us and gone in and got his food himseir, but he would never have
thought that way because the drive-through window is supposed to be
speedier and more convenient.

Americans have become so attached to the idea of convenience that they
will put up with almost any inconvenience to achieve it. The things that are
supposed to speed up and simplify our lives more often than not have the
opposite effect and I started wondering why this should be.
Americans have always looked for ways to increase comíort. It is an
interesting fact that nearly all the everyday inventions that take the
diíĩiculties out of life - escalators, automatic doors, passenger lifts,
refrigerators, washing machines, frozen food, fast food - were invented in
America, or at least íìrst widely used here. Americans grew so used to seeing
a constant stream of labour-saving devices, in fact, that by the sixties they
had come to expect machines to do almost everything for them.

The moment I íĩrst realized that this was not necessarily a good idea was
at Christmas of 1961 or ‘62, when my father was given an electric carving
knife. It was an early model and not as light as the ones you can buy today.
Perhans mv memorv is plaving tricks on me. but I have a clear impression of
him putting on goggles and heavy rubber gloves before plugging it in. What
is certainly true is that when he sank it into the turkey it sent pieces Aying
ever3Twhere and then the blade hit the plate with a shower of blue sparks and
the whole thỉng flew out of his hands and shot across the table and out of the
room, like a creature from a Gremlins movie.

My íather was always buying gadgets that proved to be disastrous -
clothes steamers that failed to take the wrinkles out of suits but caused
wallpaper to falloff the walls in whole sheets, or an electric pencil sharpener
that could consume an entire pencil (including the tips of your fingers if you
weren’t quick) in less than a second.
But all of this was nothing compared with the situation today. Americans
are now surrounded with items that do things for them to an almost absurd
degree - automatic cat-food dispensers, refrigerators that make their own ice
cubes, automatic car windows, disposable toothbrushes that come with their
own ration of toothpaste. People are so addicted to convenience that they
have become trapped in a vicious circlc: the more labour-saving devices they
huy, the hatrder they need to work; the harder they work, the more labour-
saving appliances they feel they need.
When we moved into our house in New I lampshire it was full of gadgets
installed by earlier owners, all of them designed to make life a little easier.
Most, however, were completely useless. One of our rooms, for instance, came
equipped with automatic curtains. You ílicked a switch on the wall and four

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