True confession.
Having seen Disney’s “Pinocchio” countless times – first as a kid and later as a father – I never liked that whistling do-gooder.
I get it. “Always let your conscience be your guide” is a compelling ethic when applied to life, the universe and everything. Not to mention parenthood.
But like I told you all before, friends and neighbors. Everything I know I learned from the movies.
And at a fairly young age my favorite movie star was a guy whose autobiography was titled “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.”
And I’m pretty sure that the star of “Robin Hood,” “They Died With Their Boots On” and “The Charge Of The Light Brigade” never even once let his stinkin’ conscience guide him anywhere.
All of which makes the apparent revelation that I have, at my advanced age, finally been saddled with my personal Jiminy Cricket all the more baffling.
Not to mention infuriating.
Where to begin?
Well, in my last post, “My new life as a reluctant gym rat,” I acknowledged that what kept me going to Planet Fitness on a regular basis – even though I hated it – was the fact that “guilt” is the main motivating factor in my personal universe.
But, listen, guilt is such an abstract concept that I mostly managed to live with it.
Until I bought – gasp! – an Apple Watch.
(Full disclosure: This blog has never generated a red cent and never will, dammit. So I am decidedly not being compensated by Apple to plug its cursed watch.)
Don’t ask me why I bought one. Probably because everybody was wearing them. And I am nothing if not a dedicated follower of digital fashion.
Oh, I could use it tell the time, having installed an outsized face. But I could hardly take advantage of any of its other myriad functions without putting on my reading glasses.
But the next thing I knew – and I have no idea how or why it happened – I found myself a slave to its damned rings.
You know, those three multi-colored rings that detects virtually every twitch, twist and tremor your central nervous system makes.
Not to mention its associated activity apps: Outdoor walk, indoor walk, elliptical, outdoor cycle (never indoor cycle, I’ve got my pride you know)…
Suddenly I become obsessed with closing those damned rings. And not only during my three-day a week PF ordeal, but on a daily basis.
“Exercise ring closed” chirps the disembodied voice from somewhere deep inside my watch.
I should have known right then who was at the bottom of it.
Pretty soon my dog was wondering about her good fortune for lucking into so many mile-plus walks in the park. Even at PF I began incorporating long meandering strolls up and down the aisles between spells on the machines – just to add steps.
Speaking of which: One day last week I only managed 8,852 steps and I felt like so inadequate…like I was a moderate Democrat or something. When just the day before I’d done a Democratic Progressive 15,520 steps.
Next thing I know I found myself pondering one of life’s most ponderous questions: If I work out and forget to put on my Apple Watch, does it even count?
Spoiler alert: Not!
What was happening to me?
If I’d known that the simple act of strapping a watch to my wrist was going to drive me to such extremes I’d a never done it.
No, there’s something else going on here. Personally, I think it’s that damned cricket.
He’s hiding in there somewhere. Amid the circuits and processors and digital springs. Exacting his revenge for my dissing him all those years past.
And no doubt whistling his little green tail off.
Always let your conscience be your guide, Cunningham. He’s in there, chirping that nonstop. Like a techie version of “The Telltale Heart.”
At least Pinocchio got to party on Pleasure Island before they turned him into an ass. Where’s the fun in suddenly finding that you’ve been condemned, like Sisyphus?
Thank goodness Errol Flynn is dead. He’d be crushed to learn that I’d finally gone over to the light side. Conscience wise.
FreeGNV 