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Seems time I’m insulting to someone, so why not kayakers?

Near universal among readers, I should bet, is some familiarity with tub toys from childhood. Well, see where I’m going, don’t you?

Brightly colored plastic toys in the childhood tub or colorful plastic in the kayak. What’s the difference? Size, of course, modern kayakers quickly adding skill. Indeed, skill as in, let me think, playing poker or some other recreation? I know, could harpoon a seal. Sure. Go ahead. Give that a try.

We know darn well, don’t we, we’d be lucky to find among the thousands of oversize tub toy users one who’d manage a seal kill. If that many. I’d be surprised. A canoe, at least, has some cargo capacity and has over a long time been used (in assorted forms) for group travel.

A tub toy, in comparison, might freight a few cans of pop and wrapped sandwiches. There is no comparison. So, if a canoe can serve as a boat and a kayak can’t then one is a watercraft, the other a toy. (Though for political, retail and licensing purposes we’ll sell and tax and license as we would a yacht.)
Now, to be fair to kayakers, you are to be commended for rising to the highest peak of tub toy evolution.

Much applause.

And then, a funny thing on the way to the market. I’m not at all sure I go along with affordability having a governmental fix. A role, certainly, but responsibility to fix, well that’s a different tale.
I’d ask, having been places where it

was the case that government set affordable prices, if I’d want to return? Would I? Well, no. Not at all.
Affordable meant scarce. It meant limited in style or type. Affordable meant what someone as distant as any retail executive in far away LA or Paris or Hong Kong saw it.

If you want a coffee pot are you going to get one suited for one-cup as favored in country X, one big enough to serve a party meeting, or a 12-cupper built to endure a century, or until the heating element fails next year?

Seems to me the way affordability is presented it’s a top-down affair. Is centralized authority the answer or another administrative cost that changes price upward?

Now some jingles from our sponsors. Boom-jig-a-jog-a-bango. See a pretty flashing thing we call the amazing drinkable veggie bromide of healthy eating comes in three delicious (what other) flavors.
A reader likely responds poorly to an upset in the flow, but so many of us are accustomed to regular interruptions in media, social, antisocial or commercial or political or heaven bound. It is a potentially bad sign that we get treated as subjects needing distraction and diversion when trying to think or, for that matter, do anything.

Look at how many workers you’ve seen looking intently at little hand-held screens. It’s as if they truly believe and act as if the screen in hand is the bird in the bush. Virtual accomplishment. Or is it real delusion or actual failure?

Now for a turn. Among things rejected or neglected or near to forgotten is, drum roll, the round.
What some among us ask, gaping, is a round?

Not a chubby being. Nor a moon. Not a bulb of light anymore, either. A song form used at a time when summer camps (mostly obliterated) were a child’s first solo away from home experience. (Gads, should be a law, eh?) Horrible. Might get homesick. Might not be popular. Might stink at swimming or ball games. But also might learn to face being away from home. Might learn to cope. Might develop some sport skill otherwise not available to them.

But see how the negatives seemed to get first favor? That tell us something. As does the round form of song. How many parts? Three was good. Or sometimes four. The result? Enough to likely surprise and intrigue a 10-year-old into seeing something more than noise.

There are some very beautiful rounds. And where did our human children get to experience them if not under special circumstances? Do standard practices allow for this? You have to wonder, but maybe not ask as doing so might attract attention. How socially medial we are. And isn’t it grand? That is if you’re not particular or fussy or able to spot better from emptier.

If, and I am not saying to you it is so, but if you wished to indoctrinate and limit and control wouldn’t you be leaps and bounds ahead calling that education? Well, wouldn’t you?

And if you did so you’d get what you get and maybe that explains what we have. Maybe, hmmm?
As readers you, we, are a bit special but also vulnerable to that which upsets or denies the orderly flow of communication.

The old example of pigeon chess comes to mind as a denier of process. The pigeon flies in, scatters pieces on the board, defecates and flies off proclaiming victory.

In a sense the pigeon has won, but also lost, as has the left speechless chess player.

For a society or communication to flow there must be order of some sort. But what about “The sky’s the limit”? Why not aim high? Because the sky is a limit. Hard to grow food up there or abrogate gravity or find a place to sit down. In communication, basic to society, there is order.

All communication is not equal, if it were it wouldn’t be needed because we’d know without need to ask or discuss or learn more. Our collective abilities to spot a glib answer or shallow analysis is a crucial part of what makes us human.

We are a contentious lot because none of us (despite delusions otherwise) knows it all. Do we? If all things being equal all things were equal where would we be as a result?

How good would anyone be at cataract surgery. Either we’d all be or none.

Life is not equal or fair. If you want equality I suggest the equator, and stay within bounds, and don’t expect to fit all of us under that umbrella. We won’t fit.