Remembering the Past

Today is a momentous one, one that's forcing me to remember the past. I'm speaking, of course, about my life before TiVo.

It had been acting up, getting stuck, and yesterday it died. Today I tried to watch some TV the old way, in real time, with commercials and no going back to hear what I'd missed, and the pain was so great I went online and ordered another TiVo. It should be here within a week.
As it turns out, they're giving the units away now, but the price of the subscription has increased several hundred percent. I'm not sure what justifies that increase (getting the list of upcoming programs isn't any different than it was before), but TiVo isn't doing well as a company.

As it turns out, it wasn't a bad day to avoid TV. There's evidently something magical about years divisible by five as far as human nature and ritual goes. Reporters, who ostensibly cover the news, instead decided today to be the news and inform us all about what their memories of five years ago.

Online it was no better.

A man much older than I (and one whom I considered something of a sage) once remarked to me that if I think three people give a "good goddamn" what I think, I'd best count again. Yes, humans have a need to share and it may be healthy to do so, but I have no idea why so many people are so self-centered that they need to proclaim their own rememberances when not asked to do so. No matter the subject, people are jumping online on message boards everywhere to punish us with their personal memories. It's almost as if they can only handle the immensity of the day by making it about them.

We shared an unimaginable experience five years ago. I don't know why the number five is such a momentous one, and I'm really curious when that started and why the others pale in significance.

Maybe it's hardwired into us, the same way we believe that big events are only important in how they personally affected us.