A Thoreau Analysis

Most regular readers of this column -- at least the ones whose anti-psychotic medications are managed properly -- have probably noticed that I try offer a big-picture perspective, like a Renaissance painter, while remaining topical, like an anti-fungal cream.

I might get around to that today, but first I have to tell you about my vacation.

I just got back from camping in Vermont and New Hampshire, where I spent most of my time trying to find an ATM so I could buy a key card that would operate the campground’s laundry machines, thus enabling me to dry my sleeping bag just in time for the next thunderstorm to roll through.

But I enjoyed living simply for a few days. With fewer electronic distractions and life management tasks, I could focus on my family and my insect bites.

President Obama recently vacationed at Acadia National Park, but it’s too bad he did not get the genuine tourist experience there: fighting traffic in Ellsworth, taking the Park Loop Road by mistake and having no way to turn around, nearly running over absent-minded pedestrians in Bar Harbor.

No, he has lackeys and secret service agents to do all that for him, so all he has to do is look at the lighthouses, trying to seem Presidential for photographers while gazing upon Maine’s most cherished phallic symbol.

Come on. Without some degree of stress in getting there, how can you feel like you really earned that view from Cadillac Mountain?

Just like Obama, my getaway was far too short, and I returned home to find all sorts of major problems waiting for me.

First, I had to deal with the pool.

The lethal mystery mix of chemicals we mix in had worn off, so we undertook emergency procedures. We were pool paramedics. We checked vital signs, we shocked, we billed insurance.

I feel awkward even telling you that we have a swimming pool. It feels immodest. When I grew up, they were reserved for the wealthy. I must have been 9 or 10 years old when my grandparents got an above-ground pool; I thought they must be loaded.

(They probably were, just not in the way I imagined.)

Nowadays, you’ll see these “pop-up” pools next to run-down trailers with rust stains on the siding, and no one thinks this is particularly odd.

We paid $75 for our eight-foot “pop-up,” a financial decision I vigorously opposed at first. Perhaps part of me felt subconsciously unprepared to claim pool-worthy status. The other part of me knew that we lived five minutes from a lakefront, making a pool seem unnecessary.

Besides: In Maine, it only gets truly hot about five days out of the year; five days of relief (which could otherwise be obtained from the lake or the shower) did not feel worth an entire summer of pool maintenance.

I’m not the type of person who wants to sit around worrying about the pH level in a vat of water.

On the other hand, I also don’t like worrying about my daughter. Now that we have a pool, she is already a better swimmer, at age 5, than I am.

So I caved, of course, and we got the pool, and now we have to go spend even more money on camping trips so we can feel what it’s like to have a simple life for a little while.

Our lives are full of conveniences that somehow do not make things feel any easier, and products that add a measure of security but don’t enable us to worry any less.

Well, at least my bed is almost always dry.

“Learning About Her World”

My five-year-old daughter, who shall remain nameless here because I will someday need her to fund my nursing home care, has already developed a frightening interest in certain offensive cable TV programs.

Don’t blame me. I’ve worked very hard to keep the objectionable influences of television out of my home. In fact, we don’t even own a TV. We have friends who think nothing of dropping $900 on a high-def, flat-screen plasma state-of-the-art box that does basically the same thing as my old Philco did 25 years ago.

Our living room, on the other hand, features a wood stove and a globe. The chairs face each other, if you can imagine that.

But I’m no cultural snob. I just don’t see the point of paying for cable or satellite when there are plenty of good shows available on the Internet, shows like “Dora the Explorer” and “Blues Clues.”

We recently started watching “The Jeff Corwin Experience,” in which a crazed biologist tromps through jungles and swamps so he can capture snakes, alligators, and other dangerous creatures. Each capture comes with scary background music, followed by a two-minute lecture about the animal, which is a little awkward. I mean, have you ever been talked about on camera while someone is gripping you firmly by the neck? No wonder the snakes always look so ticked off.

On the other hand, an Indian elephant looked relatively calm while Corwin cured it of constipation, using a method I’d rather not describe, except to say it required him (Corwin) to don a latex glove covering the entire length of his arm.

And you thought our health care system was bad!

Anyway, there are plenty of quality television programs available in my house. “House Hunters: International” is not one of them.

Each episode features a person or couple seeking a new dwelling in some exotic place. Through obviously scripted and staged interactions with a realtor, the potential buyers usually lament their “limited budget,” which typically turns out to be at least double or triple the cost of an average house in my neighborhood.

“House Hunters” offers all the tension and unpredictability of a public radio telethon. They look at three properties, two of which are completely disgusting because they have (gasp!) only five bedrooms or something. At the end they reveal which house they selected, only for the building inspection to reveal a termite infestation and animal carcasses used for attic insulation.

I wish.

(I can’t wait for “House Hunters: Maine,” in which a family of five looks at three different trailers, and eventually picks the one with the tarp on the roof, but only because it already comes with three junk vehicles and two cord of firewood in the dooryard.)

I don’t get it. My daughter could not watch “Elmo In Grouchland” because it was too intense. She still fears unplugging the bathtub because she might get sucked down the drain, and she spends most of her day pretending to be fairies or furry animals or fairies tending to the needs of furry animals. And she keeps asking to watch this real estate show.

What’s going on here?

My wife, who enjoys “House Hunters” but acknowledges that it spews near-criminal levels of materialism and superficiality, thinks I’m getting worked up over nothing.

“She’s learning about her world,” she says.

I guess as long as this “world” includes adventuring with a talking monkey that wears boots and sticking your arm into a pachyderm’s colon with no discernible consequences, I can live with that.