Daily Ambivalence - automatic windows

Seems like there was a time when cars didn't have automatic windows.

Back then if you wanted to speak to someone in a car you asked them to "roll down their window."

Crimes against humanity. I hear the phrase
so often, it's lost most of its meaning.

People still do that in fact. The protestors at the bottom of my street scream "roll down your window" as I pass, even though if I ever decided to stop and talk with them I wouldn't roll anything. I would just push a button.

This isn't confusing to most people because enough of us are alive who still remember the aerobic exercise it used to be to get air moving in the cab.

I just worry about the future when my kid's kids start getting their driver license. The origin of the phrase "roll down your window" will be lost to them and they will just be confused.


Picture this: Your grandson, fresh with his newly digitized driver license implanted beneath the skin of his forearm (sci fi version of the story) is speeding down the road and a robot policeman pulls him over for doing three kilometers over the speed limit (yes, the U.S. finally gives in to metrics). The police robot asks your precious grandson to roll down his window. Of course, the granson has no idea what that means, so in a panic he does nothing and the police robot shoots him with his lazer gun because he thinks the kid is doing drugs.

We could lose a whole generation of teenagers to this misunderstanding.

I was walking out of a grocery store the other day though, and there were a bunch of teenagers congregated around a vending machine. They kind of made me nervous.

Maybe losing a whole generation of teenagers would teach them a lesson.

I don't know.

Automatic windows . . . eh.