Everything's on the Internet

I wrote to my 12-year-old granddaughter the other day to ask her what a ‘goo-goo cluster’ might be. Somebody on a radio program referred to it and it sounded like some kind of Southern food in the program's context. So I asked her because she lives in southern Missouri, which is more southern than northern, I suspect, and because her father comes from North Carolina and is a genuine southerner by upbringing. I figured, one way or the other, she ought to know about ‘goo-goo clusters.’

She wrote me back promptly, saying, ‘haven’t a clue, but Wikipedia says,” and she went on to describe some candy item with marshmallows, peanuts, and chocolate, invented in Tennessee, and advertised as ‘a meal in a bar.’ I’m not familiar with that meal, but maybe in the south they have an extra one that’s just candy. If so, good for them.

The thing is, I didn’t even think to google the ‘goo-goo clusters,’ although you’d think the name alone might have suggested it. But everything is apparently there--even dumb candies--and with a history.

Today, a guy called Ed (on what we now refer to as our land line) and was leaving a message with a phone number that started with 714. ‘Isn’t that Orange County?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he replied, but now everything’s on the Internet.’ His company as well as goo-goo clusters.

Not to mention commerce. Today I also picked up a package from the post office which contained 400 grams of gorgeous mohair yarn. I bought it on E-Bay and it came to me via Turkey. I paid a total of $8.00 for the yarn and $9.00 for the postage, and the interlude between purchase and delivery into my hands was under a week. At a yarn store, that amount of mohair would have cost me something like $45-$60, but of course I wouldn’t have had to wait even a week. For that kind of discount, I can wait. But still, life on the internet. Simple commerce has changed so radically and so quickly that it’s just impossible to imagine what happens next.

I had to travel to Bellingham to see the eye doctor yesterday. In the future, I’m hoping to just see him on the internet.