The Cup That Keeps Ice for Two Days

By Mark Morgan

I bought one of those fancy cups the other day. You know the kind. The ones that promise to keep ice for two days.

Two days!

When I was growing up, we had plastic tumblers that couldn't keep ice for two minutes. You'd pour yourself a glass of sweet tea, sit down on the porch, swat a mosquito, and by the third sip, all you had left was cool tea and one lonely ice cube floating around the bottom.

And we thought that was just fine.

It got me to thinking about something else we've improved.

I remember when you'd leave the doctor's office with a handwritten prescription. Most of them looked like a chicken had walked through an ink pen and signed its name. Somehow, though, the pharmacist could read every word of it.

You'd walk into the drugstore, hand over that little piece of paper, and before long somebody behind the counter would call your name and hand you a little white sack.

That was it.

No passwords. No text messages. No insurance codes. No computer telling you it couldn't find you in the system.

Nowadays, the doctor sends the prescription electronically. It travels through computers, satellites, and who knows what else.

Then you get to the pharmacy and hear these words:

"It's not in the system yet."

Or maybe:

"We'll have to order it."

Or my personal favorite:

"Can you come back tomorrow?"

Now don't get me wrong. I like modern conveniences. I like air conditioning, GPS, and a cup that'll keep my tea cold through an Arkansas heat wave.

But sometimes I wonder if we've made things more complicated than they need to be.

We've built a cup that can keep ice for two days, but we don't sit on the porch long enough to finish one glass of tea together.

We can send a prescription across the country in a matter of seconds, yet sometimes it still takes longer to get it than it did years ago.

I reckon progress is a funny thing. We gain a lot, and we lose a little too.

And every now and then, an old plastic tumbler and a handwritten prescription remind me that the world didn't always move faster just because it got fancier.