Monday, September 15, 2008

Signs of the Times

I often find myself torn. Hearing, "Things are so bad today...What's the world coming to?...The country's going downhill..." I find myself immediately agreeing and then thinking...are they really that bad. Or is it the increased reporting of the bad stuff making it all seem worse? But then I read this morning's paper and felt like the nay-sayers are probably right.

The first story that had me reeling was a story on the cost of attending the Buccaneers' football games. A woman was complaining that she didn't know how much longer she could attend games...she estimates with tailgating, gas, tickets and food she spends $700 for her family to attend a football game. $700? Are you kidding? For 6-8 hours worth of entertainment...that's $100 an hour! It really floored me. This wasn't something she does occassionally. They attend all home games...that's $5600 for the season, excluding any playoff games. $5600 on entertainment from Sept thru December. $1400 a month! My mind is having a very hard time getting a handle on this. It is simply incredible. That would be like spending $278 in 1980. An amazing amount of money any year.

So after exclaiming outloud while reading that story, I moved on to read about the train engineer who was text-messaging while driving a train! In text-message format: OMG.

I sometimes feel like I must be going crazy because I see these stories as incredible instead of expected.

No comments: