What is the world coming to?  All around new devices are changing a beautiful, multi-dimensional and interactive world to 2D, or flat.  Didn’t Columbus take great measures to prove to old world leaders that the Earth is round?  Now, in a global world where we know better, we are being strong-armed into a flat view.  High tech is actually old-fashioned thinking.  I FLAT out have had enough.

For me, this drive to flatten the round world started in the sixties.  The idea hit the doll market, literally.  Anyone ever own a Flatsy?  A regular doll was so yesterday. Why not steamroll over the pretty little thing?  Envision a 5-inch, plastic pancake-thin doll with long wavy lemon yellow hair down to the ankles.  Well, it was a fad.  I haven’t seen or heard about them since. Fell flat you might say.

Today, TVs are flat.  Phones are flat.  Computers are flat.  Even shopping and talking are not immune.  Online purchasing is quiet and quick, but risky.  You can’t really be sure what you are getting.  For me, I prefer to see and feel things up close, gain a sense of perspective by the surroundings, not a photographer’s eye with a computer screen filter.  I like to get a clerk’s opinion too.  Two heads are better than one.  It doesn’t matter if it’s clothing or a rug or a water glass.  Is it thick or thin fabric?  Is the circumference the size of a Big Gulp or a shot glass?  Dimension descriptions help, but I want to really see what I am buying.  Shopping over the Internet is more and more THE WAY!  I don’t like it.

I recently needed to buy a new lamp.  I liked what I saw on the Restoration Hardware website.  To be triple sure the size and color would work in my décor, I paid a visit to the store.  Only one model on the floor was remotely close to what I wanted.  Anything else, the clerk would break out a digital tablet and show me pictures of the collection online, like I could see it better there than from my computer at home.

And to make matters worse, if I did want something, I was standing right there in the store where registers were ready to take my money.  I could pay in person, but the lamp shipped to my house, courtesy of me.  No shopping bag or boxes to load into my car because it all comes from a central warehouse somewhere far away.  No immediate gratification! No allowances for last minute planning.  Shopping used to be fun.

It’s not just shopping and devices that are flat.  I got a swell idea to engrave an old silver trophy I picked up at a flea market.  (A little #1 DAD for the guy who has everything.)  Engravers like it flat.  One guy said, “Oh you want to engrave something round.  You’ve got me cornered there.”  He wasn’t trying to be funny but I laughed and told him he was funny; I don’t think caught on.

Maybe this flat fad comes out of boredom, a desire to reinvent the wheel.  Or maybe it’s a case for “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”  My guys were born into the Flat Age (this will be in the history books some day like the Stone Age and the Dark Ages.)  Flatness is normal to them.  They love all the stuff my dad had from the 30s-70s.  I never in a million years would have shipped a mammoth stereo console with a record player and radio from Colorado to California when it was time to clean out my dad’s house a year ago.  3D is cool!  So NEW!  So FRESH!  Soooo Columbus!

I’d say it looks like some people are wired flat and some are wired round, kind of like seeing the glass half empty or half full.  I think it is safe to say I am a Columbus fan.  The only thing that should be flat is my tummy and unfortunately as a Columbus fan, it is easier to be round.

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