Happy Hours

Happy Hours
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday February 7, 2015

A new year always brings talk of happiness. We wish it on others, we hope to heap it on ourselves. We fantasise about it, plan for it, burden our credit cards to buy it. We tell ourselves that we deserve it. But how do we measure happiness?

As a child, I remember happiness feeling like my chest was going to burst. An uncle’s gift of a 20-cent piece pressed into my palm made me hyperventilate. I pedalled furiously to the lolly shop, seven-year-old brain frothing with anticipation, my precious coin snug in the pouch of my koala purse.

Smarties were three for a cent, musk sticks and caramel cobbers, two cents each, Gobstoppers, ten cents. Could I, would I, blow 20 cents on two Gobstoppers? I dithered at the lolly counter until Mr Gripps, accustomed to my life-changing deliberations, sighed and hung the white paper bag back on its hook. As he turned to unload a crate of peaches, I leapt to a decision. And then I rode home one-handed, clutching a bag of musk sticks (5) and a single gobstopper in one sweaty palm, wobbling with happiness.

As a teenager, my happiness dipped and soared like my hormones. Some weeks it lasted only as long as my boyfriends. But girlfriends could always bolster my fragile self esteem. At one slumber party, we 16-year-olds stayed up watching Steel Magnolias, stiff-necked in our corduroy beanbags, littering the sleepout with popcorn. We sobbed when Julia Roberts lay lifeless on the porch, howled when they switched off her life support, then fawned over her grieving husband at the funeral.

At midnight, using an ice-cream lid as a Ouija board, we held hands and conducted a séance, feverish with excitement. Happiness was ours when we conjured the ghost of 95-year-old Mrs Werne from three doors down. (She’d died, mysteriously, of old age.)

At 2am, high on Fanta and hysterical when Mrs Werne rustled up a gust that rattled the windows, we mapped out the requirements for our future happiness from the safety of our sleeping bags. Mine was conditional upon marrying Richard Gere, becoming an ABC newsreader with a lifetime pension and giving birth to triplets. (I had the triplets, it turned out, but they took ten years to emerge.)

Unhappiness was Mum arriving at my sleepover house next morning to take me home to my only-child existence, sullen from sleeplessness.

Now, still at the beginner’s end of middle age, I’ve learnt that my happiness depends on relentless participation. I need to be busy and needed and creative. I need daily triumphs. I no longer covet a BMW or a famous husband.

Perhaps happiness is the stringing together of small pleasures. Holding hands with my Collie-bred heartthrob. The sound of my children giggling in another room. Horsing around at the beach. Eating brownies with home-made icecream. A freshly vacuumed floor (do domestic satisfactions count?)

Perhaps happiness is a day of upticks: a sleep-in, a friend’s husband given the all clear after cancer, finding a forgotten block of chocolate behind the cat biscuits. At the salon where I’ve had my hair cut for a decade, the owner, Hans, always greets me by asking “How can I make you happy?” What better way to foster loyalty than by reminding his clients that his happiness depends on theirs?

On a recent drive to the farm, eldest son floated this question: “Mum, if you had to choose, would you rather a broken leg or your dodgy knee?” I chose my dodgy knee. Later, I realised that over a lifetime, my painful knee will deliver far more misery than six weeks on crutches.

My generation has made the pursuit of happiness its crusade. We delude ourselves that contentment is the difference between a weekend at Rottnest and a week at the Shangri-La in the Maldives. Will renovating our melamine kitchen make me happier? It might – for a month. But then I’ll get used to the shiny new cupboards and the self-cleaning oven and turn my discontent to our 80s faux-marble bathroom. (Life-long happiness always lives on the rung above ours.)

Even parading our happiest selves on Facebook is not enough to trump the competition. Someone’s always funnier, prettier, richer, more in love. I’ve weaned myself off Facebook. It makes me feel inadequate for no good reason. Am I happy enough? As happy as everyone else? On Facebook, the opposite of happy is envy. I just want to be content with what is.

In the supermarket last week, some new textas caught my seven year old’s eye. He badgered me up and down three aisles before I snapped:

“For goodness sake, honey, you’ve just had Christmas!”

He looked at me wide-eyed with hurt and said: “That was ages ago.”

Happiness is fleeting even when Santa Claus delivers it.

Switching Off

Switching Off
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday January 31, 2015

Above the clatter of cups and the clamourous crowd, the girl’s laugh hee-hawed across the cafe. Heads swivelled in her direction. We customers grinned at each other. She was young, sitting with friends, posing for group photos, her phone bobbing on the end of a selfie-stick. After each press of the shutter, she’d retract the stick, examine the photo and bray loudly at the result.

My gentleman neighbour, roused from his newspaper, leaned towards me and raised one grey eyebrow:

“I don’t know what’s funnier,” he said drily, “that crazy laugh, or those stupid selfie-sticks!’

We nodded at each other in smug agreement. Then he flapped his newspaper and I resumed clattering away on my second hand laptop, relieved to be in such sensible company.

I eyed the girl with her selfie-stick. She was now laughing hysterically, her friends crowding round her phone. Her delight was infectious. I felt a small stab of shame. Everyone but me seems to be high on gadgetry, I thought. And here I am, a laggard, scrabbling to keep up with the latest gear. Is it just me who’s struggling to master the devices I already have?

Last week, my Macbook Pro had a seizure, then blacked out on my desk. I palpated every button but no sweet little apple appeared. In my online darkness, there was only gloom: no email, no Google, no Facebook. The earth was flat again.

What if I’d paralysed my laptop with my own ineptitude? Rather than parade my electronic failings before all-knowing husband, I made a dash for the Apple store. The lanky door-geek waved me towards the Genius Bar. Cradling my lifeless laptop to my bosom, I consulted the brainiac behind the counter.

“Hmmm” he said, fingers flying over my grimy keyboard. I cringed as he frowned at the missing Ctrl’ button.

“I’d say your superdrive’s crashed,” he said, flipping my laptop over to inspect the serial code birthmarked to its bottom.

“It looks pretty worn out. We’ll see what we can do.”

I slunk home.

Seeking comfort from teenage son, I told him, “The genius guy called me a late adopter. Or was it a slow adaptor?”

“More like a slow learner,” he hooted, and re-clamped his headphones to his ears.

Here’s my problem: I’m not wired for rapid uptake. I don’t covet an iPhone 6. I still use my phone for making calls. (Please, no more apps!) I’m content to read books made from paper. No-one has convinced me I need a personal GPS. I’ll happily stay lost until I’m found. But I live in fear of being left behind.

Teenage son is a tech-head, his Y chromosome pre-programmed for gadgetry, like my husband’s. I see them hunched together, their rapturous faces reflected in the vast touch-screen monitor in the loungeroom.

“What are you two doing?” I ask.

“Checking out Google Glass.”

“Google Glass?”

They roll their eyes in unison.

“They’re specs with tiny built-in computers. Operated by voice command.”

I wander off to hang out a load of washing, convinced I’ll never catch up. By the time I return, my two smallest children have joined the duo, having already absorbed the basics of electronic miniaturisation.

Why does it take all my nous (and the limits of my patience) to juggle the three remotes needed to download a movie with Apple TV? My phone and tablet hustle me with their endless stream of posts and tags, links and feeds. Staying connected is exhausting. And oddly dissatisfying. I waste valuable time attending to the backlog to clear a path for uninterrupted work. I have become hobbled to my machines.

My teenager’s online social life started with a trickle and is now an electronic flood. Instagram and Facebook have locked onto his likes and dislikes and deluge him with electronic prods and prompts. His phone beeps for him continuously. He has been conditioned like a Pavlovian dog. He’ll interrupt homework, a conversation, even dinner, to check his gadgets. In fits of pique, I’ve silenced his phone in a drawer. Slammed shut his laptop. The virtual world never sleeps, and if I gave him free reign on his screens, neither would he.

The cyber-world is a disconcerting place for the uninitiated. Mum claims to have no need for email or internet. At 78, she still licks stamps, pays bills by cheque, finds an electrician in the Yellow Pages and navigates by UBD. But she’s adept at texting, and will spell out her day’s adventures with an SMS treatise. She’d be horrified to be labelled a Luddite, but claims learning new gizmos is tedious and she has better things to do, like the watering. She’s right about that, at least. I’m sure I had more freedom before computers made my life simpler.

Fast Track to Nowhere

Fast Track to Nowhere
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday July 13, 2013

Train travel is the ultimate vehicle for people-watching. It’s the perfect antidote to the four-walled claustrophobia of housewifery. I like to feel part of the throng to-ing and fro-ing, strangers heading briefly in the same direction.

On my way to the station, I cast my eye over the dozen commuters up ahead on the platform. Everyone does their waiting in their own way. No-one looks agitated or out of breath, so I conclude we haven’t just missed the train.

My three-year-old daughter scrambles out of her stroller to empty her ten cent coin collection into the ticket machine. A dishevelled young bloke with wild hair and no shoes shuffles past us. He settles himself down in a patch of sunlight strobed by the wooden bench and closes his eyes. For a moment, my toddler stops feeding the machine while she studies his face.

“Hit the jackpot yet?” An elderly gent in a tweed jacket has strolled up behind us. As the last of the ten cent pieces clunk down the slot, small daughter fishes for the ticket as it drops into the tray. “I winned!” she yells, waving her prize in the air.

We crane our necks to see who’ll be first to spot our train snaking round the bend. We hear the hiss of metal brakes and soon after four carriages rumble into the station.

I always turn left once inside the doors, just to imagine the thrill of first class travel. Three-year-old, kneeling on her seat, presses her face against the window. I settle in for the ride to town, trying to guess where my travelling companions are going and why.

Next to me is a nerdy-looking bloke wearing Woody Allen glasses. He holds his smartphone in his lap and texts: “Be there soon, darling” I feel guilty reading over his shoulder, but I can’t help myself. I wonder if he’s texting a lover, a girlfriend or his wife. I settle on ‘girlfriend’ and picture her as Annie Hall in wide-legged woollen pants and fedora hat.

Opposite us are two middle-aged women talking in sign language. I am mesmerised. In between bouts of furious hand movements they throw back their heads and laugh raucously. Their merriment is the only human sound in our carriage.

Everyone else has their head bowed, fixated by the gadgets in their laps. There’s not a book or newspaper in sight. No-one is talking, or taking in the view. There is only quiet concentration as thumbs sweep over keypads. Technology is hard at work here.  

I’m struck by the notion of eye contact, and what has happened to it. There’s certainly none in this carriage. Even the three teenagers huddled by the door are isolates bent over their devices. They are strangely expressionless, oblivious to their surroundings. A businessman standing near them stumbles and grabs for the handhold as the train brakes start to grip – but not one of the teenagers look up. Twice he has to say “excuse me” before they begrudgingly move aside to let him off. 

Perhaps the virtual world makes reality dull by comparison.  But I remember the bus ride home from high school as the highlight of my school days. The novelty of having boys on board sent our girly chatter into hyper-drive. One sly smile from a cute boy would provide endless entertainment. We would duck behind our seats giggling, then dissect his body language so intently we thought we could read his mind before he even spoke it. (“Can you reach the bell for me?” became as exciting as a first kiss.)

Yesterday, at my favourite corner cafe, I was puzzled by two young women having coffee at a nearby table. They looked to me like old pals, but for several minutes, they sat in silence, absentmindedly punching their thoughts into their phones. Perhaps connecting on Facebook is more fun than connecting across the table, I thought. But it was an odd sight. What’s driving this obsession? Fear of missing out? On what? The rapid-fire rush of social networking.

At dinner I tell my eldest son about my train ride. I recount for him what it was like before smartphones and iPods. How I would catch buses and trains and have no choice but to kill time watching the passing parade of commuters or the slideshow of suburbs flitting by. I tell him I quite enjoyed the downtime after the frenetic pace of the newsroom. 

I wonder out loud whether we’re all the more productive for having the internet as our constant and available companion. Whether this ever-present connectedness is making us super- efficient. And are we happier for it? My son pipes up: “Maybe those people on the train were just plain bored, Mum.”

That got me thinking. Dead time is now considered a waste of time. Portable technology fills the quiet gaps in living and keeps us permanently switched on and plugged in. Perhaps that’s why I love forgoing the car for the train: someone else to do the driving. Twenty minutes of mental holiday. That’s what I crave.