Air Supply:

Caleb is a long-time neighbor, who grew up and rasied a fine family of his own. He is an interesting fellow becasue he always has an opinion. I am glad he has agreed to share one of them with us. He says society has a problem. See if you agree.

Air Supply
by Caleb Wilson

In early 1980 an Australian band by the name of Air Supply got their first sappy love song “lost in love” to a man named Clive Davis who put them in a contract with Arista records and skyrocketed them to fame in only a couple of months and after only seven short months they had two top singles. I don’t personally care for Air supply’s particular brand of music but then I was not a fan of much of the music of the 80’s anyway. I heard their name on the radio the other day and it got me thinking. To state that you have a supply of something indicates that there is a limited amount it and at some point, you will run out. In the case of air, that seemed kind of silly to me. I had however been thinking about something else in America that seems to have run out. While I was contemplating our depleting sources in America, Air Supply came on the radio and my brain waves must have crossed signals because the words that formed in my head were “care supply.”

I got to those words because I was wondering, for the 1000th time, what happened to the people of this once great country, I am talking of course about those proud, sophisticated people who called themselves Americans. Then Air Supply rudely interrupted and I got care supply. I was wondering what happened to all the people, possibly even my parents own generation, who believed so strongly, in so much that there was always a “radical” movement. Which lead me to the thought that perhaps there was a “care supply” for this country that got used up by the generations just before mine? You know those Americans I speak of the ones who fought a second world war, the ones who rounded up communists in America, the ones who protested Vietnam and believed in the right to get stoned and “make love not war.” There were several generations before mine who were so active in the community, it had to get a tetanus booster and decided to get a sexual diseases test just to be on the safe side. Apparently after that the community changed its identity and went in to hiding because after about 1975 not much else has happened in it that was positive. Back for the moment to these men and women who had an opinion and felt they could affect change if they worked together to express that opinion. They had an abundant amount of care supply or did they?

Flash forward to today. I look around at a country where it seems the care supply is all used up. I am inevitably reminded of one of my most favorite science fiction inventions ever. You guessed it (more likely you did not) the SEP field, invented by Douglas Adams and introduced in the “Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.” The premise of the SEP field was that, when used properly, it rendered just about anything, no matter how ridiculous, invisible. Best stated, an SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. The brain just edits it out; it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye. The technology required to actually make something invisible is so complex and unreliable that it isn't worth the bother. The "Somebody Else's Problem field" is much simpler and more effective, and "can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery." This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. In this case, the Starship Bistromath ("a small upended Italian bistro" with "guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches") has been hidden from the crowd watching a Cricket match at Lord's by an SEP field. People may see it, but they take absolutely no notice of it. As I look at the climate in America today and all the myriad problems facing this once great nation, I can’t help but feel someone turned SEP fields on. It just seems to me that people do not care the way they used to. Now more than ever we need a replenished “care supply.” So I challenge you the reader, to ask yourself if your “care supply” is up to date and ready to be used. There are enough problems in this country that something effects you every day, even if it’s only a little nag in the back of your mind, try something new and try to gather like minded friends and affect change. As Oscar Wilde so aptly stated, “Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”