Storage Wars, Shipping Wars, Storage Wars Texas, Cupcake War okay, people television is armed and dangerous! As you know, I am not much of a fan of the television world and until a few years ago when Harold made the couch his permanent home, I seldom turned on even one of the many sets we own. This past week I had the misfortune of doing battle with one of my auto-immune disorders and since my body attacks itself, I end up doing little other than curling up someplace to rest and thought a little television watching would pass the time. You guys would have laughed your heads off at my reaction to the Lizard Lick Towing commercial! Who wants to lick a Lizard? Well, Patches maybe, in fact, he has and he ended up getting sick, they are poisonous! My parents have been gone for a very long time and I sometimes wonder what they would think of this world we now live in. Computers were just coming into their heyday when my mom died and she was quite fascinated with the possibilities they offered. I think she would love most of what has transpired over the years but feel great sorrow that people don’t pick up and read real books and newspapers like they once did. My dad died way back in 1969 and he was a much more conservative, private kind of person. I am sure when he was aboard ship he had a different persona than when he was home but he never used off color language and never spoke of things children shouldn’t hear. I grew up very sheltered and naïve and in our house, while I could argue politics when I was extremely young, I knew nothing of sex, drugs and other things. I will never forget going to the store with the woman across the street and her daughter one sunny summer‘s day when I was about eight. When we came home, the woman drove into the ditch instead of the driveway and my mom came running out of our house extremely upset and angry with me. She grabbed my arm and as she pulled me toward our house she yelled at me to never get into a car with “those” people again! The problem was she never told me why I shouldn’t. I found out years later the woman was addicted to valium but as a kid I just knew her as my friend’s mom. I didn’t get any tweets, or face book messages telling me to look out for the doped up lady driving around town. My mom couldn’t call me on my cell phone and tell me to stay at the store and she would come pick me up herself. But my biggest point is even when she had a chance to communicate what the problem really was, she didn’t and so even if all those other things HAD been invented, I still would have been walking in the dark that day. Maybe we all really are at war. Perhaps when we are going through another person’s stuff they couldn’t afford to keep, couldn’t afford to store and now someone else is fighting over, we are looking not for treasure but for meaning, sense and reason. I know that isn’t what the people on the show are looking for but perhaps the people who are watching it are. Just maybe the people are thinking how lucky they are their couch is still in their living room, their jewelry in their bedroom, their boat in their driveway. Conversely, maybe there is a little pirate in us all and we all dream of finding that hidden treasure waiting just around the corner that will change our lives forever. What I actually see in these programs most of the time is a lot of poorly written scripts, childish tantrums and bleeped out words. My parents would be appalled at the way people speak to each other these days. The freedom with which people disrespect each other would shock my father and make him profoundly sad. There are times I am very glad he is not around to see what the world has become because his gentle soul would be miserable about it all. I think the next time my own body wages war against me I will reach for a good book rather than the remote…War and Peace sounds better than Cupcake War any day! Well, it is time for me to go, Patches licked another lizard, my cupcakes are at war with the Texas storage containers and YUP, I gotta go bid on some bazookas…the gum kind! I love you all with all my heart.