The Gritty, Chalky, FD&C Yellow Taste of Twitter

My apologies to T.S. Eliot. I couldn't help myself.

This is the way the world ends:
This is the way the world ends:
This is the way the world ends:
Not with some Tang, but with Twitter.

In 1974,
my mom told me Tang was invented for NASA
(she might even have said "by" NASA)
which is apparently untrue,
since according to Wikipedia,
which I will accept as an authoritative source in this instance
(because,
I mean seriously,
who has time to go to the library,
to check out reputable sources on the history of Tang?)
but anyway,
according to the all-knowing Wiki,
Tang was selling poorly in grocery stores nationwide
well before John Glenn took it into space
for slurpage.

Facts, schmacts. 
Somehow, we all got the impression that Tang had been specially formulated for the space program. 

That's how my mom got me to drink it in the 70s:
by calling it space-drink.

She tricked me into loving Tang
even though I hated it.
Because what's to like about Tang?
It's just a chalky, disgusting Kool-aid variant.
But it was cheap
and easy to prepare
and certainly in my mother's interest
to persuade me to think of Tang
not as a drink
but as a toy.

I drank it like medicine,
trying hard not to sniff it,
and chasing it with tap water
to get the lingering taste of what can only be called
"failed approximation of orange"
out of my mouth.

Now I see people
(adults my own age and older, many of them in their sixties)
playing the same game
of re-categorization.

We all walk around with sophisticated technology in our pockets.
Our smartphones are WAY
better than the nerdy watch I had as a teen
(bulky, digital, black, with a calculator, a stop watch, and a calendar display going centuries into the future).

Our phones are cameras
and calculators
and GPS devices
and word processors
and all in all
such incredibly powerful tools
that we think it is wasteful not to use them.

And along comes Twitter
which gives us an excuse to talk to ourselves
and hundreds of thousands of people like ourselves
who hate to think of this awesome technology going to waste.

I see adults tweeting obsessively.
They can't stop, and they don't know why.

But I do.

It's because advanced technology is fun.
It's super fun--
so much fun that I used to drink Tang
just to help me pretend
that I was orbiting the moon in some capsule.

(Just turn off the lights
and play Bowie's "Space Oddity"
while sipping your Tang. 
It works.  I promise.)

Today,
one of my friends who tweets too much
broadcast the fact that he was on his way to the grocery store.

That was it. 

There was no story behind the story.

He was driving to the store, and it was important for the Twitterverse to know.

I tweeted back,
"Pick up some Tang while you're there."

But he didn't get it.

/shrug

Author's Note

According to Wikipedia: Dr. William A. Mitchell, while working for General Foods, "was the key inventor behind Pop Rocks, Tang, quick-set Jell-O, Cool Whip, and powdered egg whites." My first attempt to describe Pop Rocks to my friends was: "It's like exploding Tang, only grapier."