Boiled Frogs

You know the parable of the frog in the kettle. Supposedly, a frog dropped into a kettle of very hot water will make strenuous efforts to escape. However, it is claimed, a frog in a kettle of lukewarm water will permit the water to be raised to a boil without protest. I have not actually attempted this experiment with any frogs, toads, or other of God’s amphibious creatures, so I cannot verify this phenomenon. It is supposed to illustrate the way in which we adapt to incremental change in our environment almost without awareness. Eventually we find ourselves in a radically different place and we do not remember the journey. We simply take it all for granted.

That hit me yesterday. Around 7:15 PM I closed my MacBook Pro. For 45 minutes I’d been sitting with Willie in the parking lot of the Floresville McDonald’s watching a live television feed of the liftoff of the Space Shuttle Endeavour with the crew of STS-126. One of the guys on board is a friend of mine – one of a dozen or so men and women I have come to know who have flown in space. Before driving the couple of miles into town I wanted to be relatively certain the launch was going to happen. So I sent a text message from my Treo to another astronaut whom I knew was in Florida working the launch. In minutes he sent me a text message affirming that everything was looking good. And it was good. A beautiful night launch. I wish I could have been there.

This is where the frog in the kettle thing comes into play. All that I just described is business as usual stuff for me in 2008. Astronauts who have flown in space? Instant text messages across the country? Live television feed of a space shuttle launch being viewed over a wireless connection in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in a town of 5000 people? That morning I had received an email from my son in Afghanistan, half way around the world. And that is a short list. I have previously received both email and cell phone calls from the International Space Station orbiting 150 miles or so above the earth at 17,500 mph.

So now I’m sitting at the farm, writing this blog, which I’ll post at the McDonald’s before heading home this afternoon. I’ve included a photo, which is a screen shot of my computer watching a video replay of the launch. If I check my Sitemeter icon on my blog I’ll see that people from all over the U.S. as well as from Ireland, Uganda, Kuwait, Singapore, Russia, Pakistan, Japan, London, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Germany, and France have viewed my blog. Some did so intentionally. Some found it using Google while looking for something else that caused this page to pop up. I can tell all that from looking at the Sitemeter.

When did all this become normal? When did I stop being amazed? If I’d been dropped into this environment from 1970, I would be walking around slack-jawed every day. But it has all come so gradually.

And what else has changed about me, or good or ill, with such slow, evolutionary, incremental speed that I have remained unaware? When did my hair turn grey and when did my joints become so stiff? The list of those changes is probably long. The water’s been boiling for a while and I haven’t even noticed it.