For Here or To Go?

The number of choices I have to make in a day has risen exponentially. Even going into a restaurant taxes the brain cells.

"You can order off our regular menu or our Diner's Specials. And on the back is our Weight Watchers menu too. Your choice. OK, you want the steak. Great! Do you want that cooked rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, or well done? You can have steak fries, cottage fries, French fries, or plain old fried potatoes with that. Unless you want the vegetable of the day, which is a choice between a squash/carrot medley, green beans almondine, or broccoli rice casserole. You get either soup or salad with that. Salad? OK. What kind of dressing? We have ranch, thousand island, Italian, honey mustard, raspberry vinaigrette, Russian, or Venezuelan Beaver Cheese bleu cheese dressing. While you're waiting on your order, we have two TVs for you to watch. You have a choice between watching twenty-two guys beat each other to a pulp playing football, or a woman cheating on her husband in "As the Stomach Turns." You can have your beverage of choice in a cylindrical glass or one with four corners. You can use a straw, or not. We want you to have a hand-picked, tailor-made, customized restaurant experience with us. Unless you'd rather not. Your choice."

I wonder if we get so many choices about nonessentials to obscure the lack of choice about many essentials. We do not get to decide that we want our infrastructure refurbished and our schools (all of them, not just wealthy suburban ones) adequately funded before we start wars. People with little money in the inner cities are not free to choose better schools for their children. Many of us do not get to choose hospitalization without the danger of bankruptcy. Getting prescription drugs from Canada where they are cheaper? Forget it.

But we can have our burgers with or without fries, or get fruit salad instead. It is completely up to us.