God save us our myth-takes

REMEMBER the digital watch? Hard to, but it wasn't all that long ago. A billion-dollar industry for a few years there. But next thing, gone - yet another technological meteor vapourising in the night sky.

I can't even really remember why it bit the dust so spectacularly. I suspect it was because all those little electronic dots were really hard to read unless you stuck it in the shade of your armpit. Or it may have been that you had to deal with the military-type regimentation of 24-hour clock time-telling - 16.20, and all that. Or was it that you needed a degree in advanced electronics if the thing ever needed resetting?

But how we were all sucked in for a while there, together with all its digital cousins - some of whose inbred aberrants still prey on us to this day.

Not long after the watch came the car dashboard that (after sunset) lit up like Coney Island with all manner of flashing digital statistics apparently indispensable to the vehicle's successful propulsion.

One small glitch, though. Nobody could read a damn thing in the daylight unless you just happened to strike the lowering overcast conditions presaging a fierce thunderstorm. Sorry, officer! If only I'd been able to read my speedo there's no way I would have been doing 160, oath!

Again a few billion dollars later, the car manufacturers sheepishly retooled after reluctantly acknowledging the sheer efficacy of the humble needle-on-a-dial. So I'm pleased to report that the only digital thing on my 2002 vehicle is the radio/stereo, which is why (in daylight) it's still all pot luck in trying to find particular frequencies.

But these cons-on-a-stick just don't happen willy nilly.

It takes many years of insidious social conditioning to butter us up for the sting. It all started with the poster in the school dental surgery.

Remember, the one that said the best way to keep Bertie Germ at bay was to eat an apple just before going to bed. Of course, subsequent research established that coating the canines in citric acid prior to eight hours' slumber was to unleash the most efficient caries-producing mechanism known to man. Talk about conflict of interest - I'm sure those dental nurses knew! Those posters were their job-tickets from here to eternity - or at least until there was nothing left to fill but fillings! Don't forget, now, a nice apple just before you go to bed! ... Same time next week? Byee!

Then, of course, mums were in on the act too. Remember that old classic - if the new or hand-me-down clothes/shoes/whatever were too small, don't be silly - they'll stretch! And if too big, why naturally they'd either shrink or we'd grow into them - either way, don't be a fuss-pot! Of course, by the time we found out they never did stretch/shrink, or they'd worn out before we ever did grow into them, it was all over bar the shouting.

Just the tips of the iceberg! Don't start me! Greaseproof paper! Take greaseproof paper - you know, the stuff your school sandwiches used to be wrapped in prior to the clear, clingy stuff. One assumed the paper was made grease-impervious to prevent buttery emissions despoiling your exercise books. But prior to the paper towel, what was the paper of choice for soaking up excess grease on home-fried chips?! You guessed it ... greaseproof paper! And how that paper gobbled it up! But everyone would still glibly call it - believed that it really was! - greaseproof paper. See, you shouldn't have started me.

Corks in wine bottles! Remember, the experts insisted wine bottles be stoppered with cork so the wine could "breathe". Now it seems all those aerobics were just so much bad breath, and hermetic sealing with plastic or tin caps is de rigeur. Mythhaps, I call them.

So, all those little cons got us buttered up for the big ones.

Remember trickle-down economics? But if all that greasy moolah ever does start trickling down, I'm in the money. I'm wearing my flash greaseproof paper suit ready to soak it all up!

Frank Greenall has a master's degree in adult literacy and managed Far North Adult Literacy before moving to Wanganui.