Ok, so a month ago, I was sitting in our time share in Maui Hawaii. A place, with much of my family, I’ve been blessed enough to come during the Christmas/New Years holidays for the past 29 years.

Each year, I rationalize the huge cost and debate with myself (usually for about 10 seconds or so) how I shouldn’t really spend the money it takes to come.  I tell myself I can’t afford to be here, or how can I save enough for my old age by spending it on a trip here.

And each year, when I get home, and after the bills are paid, I forget about what it costs but just cherish the memories that each year brings.

What gets me is how I, and about everyone else I know, spends money on vacation, or even when going about their lives at home, irrationally.

This is not just monetarily irrational, but NEED based irrationality.

Need? There’s a term that’s often ill used. I/We NEED one of those. Do we really need it in the true sense of the word? Will something bad happen to us if we don’t have it? Will we be sad and deprived if we don’t buy that thing we are looking at.

Of course not.

How many times have you gone into a grocery store and said to yourself, well for $20.00/lb. of $2.00 a box or a bunch, I’m not going to buy these? How many times have you driven out of your way to save 5 or 10 cts/gallon on gas? How about the coupon savings, and the list goes on and on. Then we go to a restaurant, even a McDonalds and pay a large multiple of what it would cost to buy in a store, take it home, prepare and eat it.

So we all act irrationally from time to time if not all of the time.

Another good example is a toothbrush or a mans electric razor. Most people use their toothbrush at least once a day and yet hesitate to buy a new one if the old one isn’t up to the task. Men use an electric razor each and every day and yet hesitate between buying the $50 or the $150 model when one is available cheaper that is not as good.

When we shop for a new car, we read the advertisements, make ourselves crazy negotiating, and don’t even hesitate about paying for the accessories that “come with the car.” Yea, right. Come with the car. Can I buy the car without this stuff? The salesman says, yes but it will take months to get it and who wants to wait months to sit behind the wheel of this good smelling, shiny brand new vehicle.

When I was growing up, back in the dark ages, everyone washed their car at home. To eat out, if you were middle class, it was a special occasion that usually occurred on a Sunday and it had to be really special to eat in an upscale restaurant as a family, if ever. If you were poor or lower middle class, you never ate in a restaurant. That was for the rich!

This was because my parents were adults in the depression. They knew, as the saying goes, “the value of a dollar” There were not any credit cards. You paid cash for everything unless you bought it on “layaway” at your local department store or you financed your car at your local bank. There were all kinds of repair shops. Nobody thought of throwing away or replacing an appliance or a sofa or about anything if it could be repaired and salvaged.

But as America and elsewhere became more prosperous, and prices rose rapidluy due to inflation, we all got lax. Easy credit helped and we all wanted what we saw the other guy enjoy. We became “penny wise and dollar foolish” or perhaps, just dollar foolish.

Today, if you’re out of work, and struggle to pay the rent you quickly learn the value of a dollar, just like depression era people did. I think we should all keep this in mind, me included. 

Even if we rationalize that we can afford it, when considering an expenditure of something we say we ‘NEED” think about a time that may come when we don’t have the ability to buy it. 

I’ve been around a long time but women never cease to amaze me!

I have recently had the distinct Hawaiian pleasure of enjoying vast quantities of “eye candy.” My favorite flavor is women in bikinis.

They seldom leave the beach or lawn chair or pool chair to go into the water. Instead, they oil up and practice what is commonly known as sunbathe.

Fine for me, but why? The tans don’t last very long, they are surely not good for your skin, and the oil/lotion is greasy and has to be washed off at the end of the day. Sooner or later they will probably peel no matter how much costly lotion they will put on when they get back home.

Now back to the bikini. Why do they want to expose/display so much skin? When they return to the cold winter climates in which they live, they will be all bundled up. To top it all off, they all think, that no matter how svelte they really are, they don't look as good as they should. A bulge here, a scar there, always something.

Now take men. They wear bathing attire that typically stretches from below the naval to just above the knees, depending on the height of the man and the length of his bathing suit. (That’s another strange word – bathing suit? A suit for bathing? A suit for swimming??)

They don’t worry about what their torso will look like when they return home, or really not how it is when they are on the beach. Their too busy looking at the women in their bikinis!

I recently had the difficult task of watching the Victoria Secret annual fashion show. Talk about eye candy, but why do heterosexual women like to see that? When they buy that flimsy, revealing sexy stuff, they’re not going to look anything like the models that walk up and down the runway. To the contrary.

Are they hoping/calculating that the man in their life will find them sexy? Believe me girls; if your man doesn’t think you’re sexy even in the dark, Victoria Secret isn’t going to change it. The real secret at Victoria is how profitable it is to sell these few centimeters of fabric for the prices they get.

My wife never ceases to amaze me either. When we travel like on this trip, she manages to take a whole beatify salon along with us. She has many outfits and shoes for any occasion that may arise and yet she doesn’t really have any more luggage than I do.

Then there’s the female personality. One day the husband or boyfriend or in this day in age, the “cohabiter” comes home from work and she’s not talking to him. He senses something wrong and before he asks her to get him a beer or why their dinner isn’t ready, he asks what’s up? She doesn’t answer. He begs and finally she says, “You know what’s wrong?” “I do he says?” “What is it?” And she gives him the classic womanly answer:” “You know.”

Obviously if he did he wouldn’t ask. Finally after hours or more often days, it comes out. He didn’t call when he was going to be late, or didn’t pick up his socks, or forgot to run an errand, etc.

Would two men ever have a confrontation or conversation like this?

It’s been observed by professional behavior experts that two or more women can’t keep their displeasure with each other inside them for very long. Men will have the same problem with each other, but can keep it to themselves.

Ah, the mysteries of life. Men love women and really can’t live without them, but will we ever figure out what makes them tick? Years ago, Peggy Lee, a jazz singer recorded a song called “I’m a Women.” It talked of all the amazing thing women can do as a matter of course. They are truly amazing creatures! 

We all want to be in touch with those who are meaningful to even casual acquaintances to us. We have an innate need to communicate with one another.

At one time, the mail was the source of communication between friends family and business associates. It was the source of checks being sent and far more bills. This is not the case anymore given the Internet and in most households about 95% of what we get are advertisements. Computers changed all this.

Now everything we used to check the mail for and even our voice mail for is going by the wayside. We use our mobile phones.

Over the Christmas/New Years holiday, I had the pleasure of sharing many meals with most of some of my grand daughters who range in age from 9 to 16. The little one is yet to be afflicted with “phonosis”, but the other one’s are fully into it. For that matter, so are most people.

So far, medical science is yet to come up with a treatment or cure for this disease that has afflicted a very large percentage of the population, both here and abroad.

My oldest granddaughter is in a relationship with her first boyfriend who is back home. They are texting back and forth as much as possible, and it becomes most noticeable at mealtime. She’s expert in slyly putting the phone under the table and pretending to look at her plate when she’s really typing away below.

The 13-year-old texts heavily with her friends and all of them enjoy the games and pictures etc. available on their smart phones.

This fascination, use, enjoyment is not restricted to children. My daughter is on it all the time, albeit most of it for business, and yes, even on her vacation. My wife is in constant contact with her family that isn’t here, and I must admit, I for just curiosity, check my phone for incoming email several times a day.

We are all creatures of habit and the smarter the phone, the more it influences and consumes more of our daily lives.

The classic is around younger adults. When they are at a party or at a bar and while talking with a prospective romantic interest or even friends, they are continually checking their phones for texts and emails. It’s like, the present company isn’t entertaining me, I’m here and what am I missing elsewhere. They suffer from acute “phenosis.” And did I mention Facebook and Twitter? Another reason to check/send your messages on your phone no matter what you are doing. They can’t help it. They are “phenosiified!”

To me, this is crazy. Why not pay attention to the people you are with, or why be there with them in the first place?

Worse yet, this practice is rapidly becoming, as the popular phrase goes, “the new normal.”

Perhaps sometime in the future the nighty TV news anchor will be texting under his desk or checking his smartphone while talking to the camera. How about during a Presidential address. Obama is an avowed blackberry user. Could a surgeon text a colleague about a lunch date with one hand while the other one is deep inside your intestines?

It can be at home around the dinner table with family, scarily, while driving, in a business situation, and to me, worse of all, in a social situation.

There is one vaccine that is available in very small quantity. It’s hard to come by and not available in any store. One source it can come from is a parent. The word, no longer common, is discipline.

Reminiscent of the old TV westerns where the sheriff had the cowboys check their guns at the door before entering the bar, on several occasions my daughter and I went around to each of the adolescents at mealtime and told them to check their phones with us.

Of course they protested, but an amazing thing happened. The vaccine, discipline, worked! No texting, no emailing. The young girls actually had conversations with the adults and each other. It wasn’t even painful after the first few minutes.

The Phenosis disease is spreading wildly around the world and there is no end in sight. Should it be stopped? Can it be stopped? I don’t know, but I do know that it remains essentially incurable without parental, employer or self discipline. As the phones get more sophisticated, drop in price and more of the world’s population becomes afflicted, it will be a challenge for society to develop more vaccines like discipline. I hope we can!

People have gone from smoke signals and tom-tom communication to hyper continual 24/7 communications. Do we really want to know that much about each other?