The Jetsons are coming....?

Remember THE JETSONS? For those of you who don't, it was a space age cartoon some of us watched as kids, a show where a family lived in a kind of space needle home and putted around the sky in an air-car with their dog* to the store and the hair salon, etc. We all thought it was NUTS, "this could never happen!" They flew around from time to time, but they could do everything from home. They even had a robot maid. Obviously, we don't FLY around literally, like they did, but we might as well be flying, in a sense, as we stay in our cars and go from place to place.

So, living and flying around in insulated sorts of 'bubbles', never really making contact with other people in their own insulated bubbles....is that a good thing?

A fellow who attends my church is in a wheel chair but has fair use of his arms, thankfully. I see him on the streets more frequently than I'd have expected because I just don't see many people I know tooling around town. I'll turn into a restaurant parking lot and see Sam scooting across the driveway and I'll stop and put my window down and we'll chat. I'll see him while driving down the street and honk and wave and Sam throws me a huge smile and waves back. I love seeing Sam because I like him and because it feels good to see a friend when I least expect it, and I got to thinking how kind of 'cozy' that is, how very 'Mayberry-esque', to use another television show analogy!

I got to thinking that it's our CARS which prevent us from seeing more friends around town, even in a city as big as the one I'm usually driving around in; Santa Monica, California.
Everyone's in cars and, yes, occasionally you'll see someone you know and you'll both wave but that's really rare when everyone's got his eyes on the road.
A few years ago, I parked and put money in a meter and had a doctor's appointment which took a much longer time than I'd expected. I worried that my time on the meter was over and I'd get a $50 ticket. When I got outside, I saw my car had plenty of money in the meter and I was really surprised and ........ curious! The next Sunday, at church, a friend said "Hey, Z, lucky you didn't get a ticket the other day in front of the St John's Medical Building, huh?" Yes, this friend walks everywhere and did that for me......my Meter Angel! That's hard to do when you drive by.

When we're not in our cars, we relate with people.......we help, we talk and feel a sense of community that's so rare anymore. And the internet is an enigma in that some of us spend waaaaay too much time on it and relate less with our family and friends on the phone, for example. Or we stay home more than we might because we're enjoying blogging, etc. We don't go to the stores as much because we buy on-line, right? How many people go to the library anymore just to look something up? But, in the place of our REAL FRIENDS in 'real life', we have a whole circle of amazing people on the blogs who share our values, which is evidenced as we read their blogs or their comments at ours, and I wonder about that........that's a good thing, but is it the best thing?
Should we shut the computer more often and get outside in order to avoid becoming THE JETSONS? Is it better to get out, walk to the store, shop instead of buy on-line, eat out instead of bringing in take-out? Is Mayberry better than the Jetsons? What do you think? Can we turn back the tide?
Quiz: What was the name of the Jetsons' dog? :-) I know, it's easy but I like little TV quizzes, humor me!
Z