Simply Following Directions

Do We Really Need Directions for How to Use Toothpaste?

For the past 17 months I’ve acknowledged a familiar greeting from my DVD player whenever I flop down on the couch: 12:00 12:00 12:00 12:00 12:00. Even since the great power failure of 2005 when it suffered a minor stroke, the clock has continuously winked at me, hoping that I’ll ultimately be cajoled into correcting the time. Fat chance.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. One evening last week, I even dragged out the user manual to try to figure out how on earth you reset the time. Like most user manuals, the 64 page guide is broken down into language sections for French, Spanish, Yiddish, Lithuanian, Tagalog, Japanese, Chinese, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish and Bulgarian. Flip it over and you’ll find Dutch, Arabic, Portuguese, Farsi, Vietnamese, Turkish, Korean, Italian, Thai, Cantonese, Polish, Burmese and even a section devoted to Pig Latin. Thankfully, the scant last page was in English.

Due to the litigious nature of our society, user instructions are now required for just about every consumer product, but tend to offer little in the way of support. Often times there’s no words; just pictures. There’s a diagram with one cord going from the S-video output on the DVD to the S-video input on my microwave, followed by three sets of color-coded composite A/V cables dispatched to the red, yellow and white audio out and DVD left/right ports on the toaster. This is immediately followed by an illustration of a human finger poking an electrical outlet with a large, red international circle with a line through it, meant to convey some sort of warning. After three frustrating hours, I finally gave up and decided to turn in for the night.