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Today I am going to pull back the curtain and let you see what is going on backstage at the newspaper office. To begin, there is the issue of the newspaper that you are now holding in your hands. You have probably noticed that it looks different from the typical weekly offering. Almost the entire edition is devoted to a single concerning theme. We did this last year for the first time, devoting space to the opioid epidemic that is affecting the ranks of our young. We had hoped to get the conversation going in our communities about this troubling scourge, which too often is hidden away for its stigma. The resulting issue was so positively received that we decided to pick some of the other urgent subjects and, likewise, concentrate attention on them individually from time to time. It is our belief that when the community is unified at recognizing and dealing with a challenge, we can overcome.

The current issue deals with climate change. We are not entering into discussion here about whether or not it is real. Instead we are reporting on changes to our local environment that are taking place, organizations that are tracking and dealing with those changes, governmental programs that have been formed in response to weather-related events and some of the economic effects of the above that touch all of us. We are especially interested, as always, in finding out what our residents are thinking and feeling, and helping you to understand the many aspects of the subject.

We hope we have done that this week. Look on our website for a video that accompanies this theme at tbrnewsmedia.com. We welcome your responses, via email, texts or letters to the editors.

On a more joyful note, we partied hearty Sunday night celebrating the 2016 People of the Year. As you know, we fill the last issue of each year with profiles of those working hard to make our towns and villages the wonderful places that they are. Some of those we salute are rather obvious, some are hidden from sight and largely unappreciated. You, our readers and our reporters who are covering the news have nominated most. We offer the spotlight of publicity to help the winners in their efforts and also to express our appreciation for their ongoing work. We limit the candidates to those who work here, live here or are doing something valuable that makes our lives better.

Then, the following March, in a grand hands-across-the-community collaboration, the Three Village Inn, Stony Brook University and Times Beacon Record News Media throw a fun party for the winners in Brookhaven Town and their guests, along with community leaders and some previous winners. Framed certificates and explanations are offered at that time. It’s a perfect setting for productive cross-pollination of ideas and resources, and sometimes the Inn has to urge us out because guests are reluctant to leave the conversations at the end. Normally we would run some of the photos from the party kindly taken by Setauket resident Bev Tyler in the following issue to remind readers of the winners, but that feature will have to await next week’s edition.

Also, did you know that nine first ladies among the 45 so far were born in New York state? That’s a concentration of 20 percent born in what amounts to 2 percent of the union. And they are a fascinating bunch, with stories surrounding them all. We have made a video of them, “The Ladies of Liberty,” narrated by Elizabeth Kahn Kaplan, complete with photographs and artifacts, and we showed a bit of it at the party. If you would like to use the video at fundraisers or other group meetings, ask us for the link. It’s free, it’s a service we offer, it runs for about an hour and it’s engaging for the history painlessly learned. Or you can view it soon on YouTube or our website.

So that is some of what has been happening in our world.

  

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How to defeat ISIS, save the economy and reunite the country

By Michael Tessler

Michael Tessler

Historically speaking, the United States economy tends to thrive in wartime. Americans become patriotic when faced with a great foreign menace. In times of crisis, we tend to buy American products. Our star-spangled workforce works harder and innovates quicker. Our domestic political disagreements seem smaller when we tackle something larger than ourselves. In these moments of dire necessity, we find common purpose. Under that pretense our nation was founded and through the centuries has propelled it to unparalleled success.

Thankfully, we do not need another world war to accomplish this spirit of unity. This may all feel impossible as the gap between our political factions has never felt wider. On every issue it seems partisanship dictates idleness and/or delinquency. So how do we bridge that gap? How do we break the ice? Well the answer is simple — by protecting it.

Climate change is the key to a new era of American greatness. Now, even if you don’t believe in climate change, hear me out. Before we can proceed, please remove the term “climate change” from your mind as some abstract scientific concept. Let’s personalize it, treat it in the same fashion we’d treat any great and terrible foreign power or dictator. It helps to imagine it with an evil little mustache. Envisioning it now? Good.

This Blue Scare (yes, as in excess water) threatens our homes, our livelihoods and our way of life. If we lose this literal “Cold” War, our cities and towns could be decimated not by atomic fire but by superstorms, erosion, dust bowls and flooding. Each day we wait, the Blue Menace grows stronger, melting glaciers and capturing our territory, inch by inch.

Let us form an iron curtain around the ozone layer, protect it from further damage and economically punish those who aide in its destruction. We must establish a great coalition of all civilized nations to combat this threat in an act of global unity, all the while strengthening and cementing our role as an international leader.

This Blue Menace has allied itself with our nation’s greatest physical enemy, ISIS. Their terrorist organization wants nothing more than for us to continue to ignore this mighty faceless foe. According to the United States Treasury and Dubai-based energy analysts, ISIS receives nearly $1 to $3 million a day selling oil. Meanwhile, the United States continues to be the global leader in daily oil consumption accounting for 20 percent of all global use each and every day.

By ending our addiction to oil, we could decimate the so-called Islamic Caliphate without dropping a single bomb. Without the money from that precious resource, they would be unable to remain an effective fighting force. Our nation would no longer have to maintain alliances with false friends, who have used their swaths of oil as leverage over our current state of dependence.

Meanwhile, we can commit that all investments in green energy jobs must be American. We can hire every single unemployed American to help build a modern and green infrastructure. We will see the greatest investment in public works since President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. We will create a new generation of energy-producing highways (yes, that’s an actual thing), new energy fueling stations, bullet trains, green appliances and the vehicles of tomorrow.

Industry will boom and the workforce will grow as we upgrade and innovate many existing products and power plants. Regardless of how one views climate change, the economic possibility is real and should not be ignored.

One of the biggest concerns I’ve heard is how will communities that produce outdated energy sources be impacted? Though the merits of “clean coal” can be debated, it is simply not a renewable resource. Our economy cannot survive or remain competitive in the 21st century using finite resources.

We cannot and will not abandon those who live in coal and oil country either. We will continue to ensure that their communities thrive by transforming them into clean energy economic hubs, providing not just new jobs, but training and tax subsidies to aide in their transition. Their concerns are genuine and have a right to be heard.

As long as the United States can be fundamentally held hostage by oil, we are at-risk. We owe it to all those who have sacrificed, to our children, born and unborn, to the ideals of America itself, to create a country that relies solely on the ingenuity of its people rather than foreign pipelines and the fuel of a bygone century.

So let’s defeat ISIS, let’s grow the economy, let’s reunite our country, let’s do something bold — we have landed a man on the moon, and with that same American tenacity, we can harness the power of the sun.

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Whether you voted for Donald Trump or not, you have to agree that he is responsible for a positive outcome from his campaign and his election. He has animated the population he serves. It is no secret that Americans have, as a country, been largely apolitical. When I have traveled to other countries, especially when I first began, I have consistently been impressed by and even envied how much politics and current events were a part of the daily conversations among the people I was visiting. But that was not so in the United States. Throughout my academic life, in high school and college, there were almost no political clubs, and those that did exist had few members who were regarded as a little odd for their political passions. I have not found many people who were deeply interested in our government, its processes, its politics and its politicians. Indeed, spot person-in-the-street interviews regularly revealed that most respondents did not know who held which office beyond that of the president and perhaps the governor.

Not any longer.

Imagine my surprise when the 4-year-old son of a friend came home from nursery school and announced his opinion of President Trump, complete with reasons. A 13-year-old I met knows the name of the Environmental Protection Agency chief (Scott Pruitt), and a 15-year-old announced that she wants to register as a Republican as soon as her age allows so she can help decide who the party’s next candidate might be. These are not just youngsters parroting what their parents are saying. In some cases the youngsters disagree with their parents. How do they know to do that? They are now surrounded by news, whether on television, with blasts on their iPhones, from talking to each other in class or hearing many adults offering different opinions. Wherever all of us go, to a doctor’s appointment, to a casual restaurant, in and out of stores (with the exception so far of supermarkets), there is a television turned on and we hear the latest comments from both parties, outrageous or not. The media are having a field day reporting quotables. And the public is deluged. Kids, remember, are part of the public.

How long can you be at a dinner party before the talk turns to politics? When you wake up in the morning and switch on the radio or the TV, don’t you expect to hear the latest quote from Donald Trump? The president has managed to dominate world news so provocatively that his is the most well-known name on the planet.

I think what has happened is a good thing. An informed and engaged public is necessary for a democracy to exist. Our Founding Fathers said as much. The United States has had a dismal voting record at the polls during election season for scores of years. Less than half of those eligible actually vote here compared with other, newer democracies where voters may risk their lives in order to cast their votes. We, living in a nation that is the symbol of democracy, are too complacent to be bothered voting or too cynical to think that our vote might matter.

So I am delighted to see young people talking about politics and asking how government works. And we in the news business are validated by the sight of grown-ups arguing government policies on street corners. Let’s get everybody involved, even if it takes incredible, unprecedented comments and actions to stir us up. I came of age in the Vietnam era when marches and, yes, riots in opposition to government policy toppled a sitting president and eventually stopped the war.

The good news is we don’t have to riot. We don’t even have to march. All we have to do is go to the polls and vote. And if we don’t get what We the People want, we do it again the next time until we get the public servants we wish to represent us. An informed and engaged populace is a beautiful thing.

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Long ago, I wrote a column about vomit and education. No, I didn’t suggest that teachers should encourage vomiting or that education gets better amid the smell of vomit. Sorry to those of you who are gagging even at these words.

No, for those without an encyclopedic knowledge of my columns — OK, all of you — I wrote that my son, who was only 5 at the time, often came home with exactly the same answer to the question about what happened in school: “Nothing.” Then, one day, a classmate was in the middle of saying something when she vomited.

Suddenly, my son became the bard of vomit, describing in technicolor detail everything that poured out of his classmate’s mouth. It didn’t stop there. He recounted each of the steps the teacher took to clean it up and resettle the room and then, to my shock, he shared a few things about the next lessons she tried to teach.

While I’m not suggesting the value of vomit in the classroom, I did recognize something unusual that occurs during these high-energy moments: People pay more attention.

What triggered — bad word choice here, I know — my thinking about this observation is March Madness. The NCAA basketball tournament has 64 teams entering this bracket, all of whom have fans, family and friends hoping their journey can go just one more game all the way to the championship.

Now, these games can be — and often are — ridiculously exciting, with young players pushing themselves to the limits of their speed, endurance and coordination to make impossible game-winning shots that carry their fans to the next level of ecstasy.

The winners stand in front of a microphone at the end of the game and recount what we’ve just witnessed, taking us through the moment when they got the ball at the top of the key, faked left, passed it to a teammate, and then crashed the boards just in time to grab the rebound and slam home the game-winner.

We know what we saw and rarely, if ever, do these interviews produce much more than, “Yeah, it was great,” or “I’m so excited, I just don’t have words for this.”

So, this is where the vomit analogy comes in. Some of these players likely contribute to causes, believe in community service, have something to say about what they’ve overcome, can share the best advice they’ve ever gotten or remember a moment that still matters.

I realize it’s asking a lot of the reporters and the athletic superstar whose primary concern may be going to the bathroom, getting his uniform clean for the next game or getting to the bus on time to go to the airport.

Still, these moments, with the players, coaches and even fans could include some kind of life lesson. Players don’t need to preach, nor do they have to demand that we participate in their favorite charity. However, they can use the spotlight to inspire and encourage us with their incredible achievements off the field, their commitments to family or their contributions to a church group.

Now, I realize Olympic coverage often includes features about people who are dedicating their efforts to a relative or who volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters. And, I appreciate how sports purists may find the effort an intrusion in the cliché-riddled wide world of sports, where the players are just happy to help the team and they take everything one game at a time and they try not to do too much.

But some day, that athlete will no longer have the microphone and some day, the world will no longer be watching. While we’re inspired and moved by their magnificence on the court, how about if, to the extent possible, they also encourage us to follow their lead in other arenas. An energized audience may see this as a chance to turn a good game into a great achievement.

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Aging isn’t for sissies. We’ve all heard that line before and it also applies to our pets, our cats and dogs, our horses and so forth. Teddy is our only pet, a golden retriever with a square head, a pug nose, expressive brown eyes and an affable disposition. He has lived with us since he was 8 weeks, and in June he will turn 12.

It’s hard for us to see him getting old. He is totally deaf now and only knows we are there when we touch him. Then he will be startled as he whips his head around to see us and slowly wags his tail as if to say, “Oh, I know you, I’m safe with you.” He has serious cataracts that interfere with his vision, and he is beginning to bump into the corners of furniture. He’s gone white around his muzzle, although the changeover from light blond isn’t so dramatic. And while he still can find his way back to the front door after he’s gone out, he occasionally wanders aimlessly inside the house. Sometimes he just sits and stares at a wall. Yet most of the time, he is his usual self, putting his head in each of our laps in turn as we sit in the living room and nuzzling us with love.

Worst of all, for no reason we can discern, he will begin a chorus of howling. It’s a curious chain of sounds, starting at a high pitch and dropping down until it is wolverine, coming from deep in his throat. He throws his head back when he howls, much like the wolves I saw in the Oregon Zoo in Portland. Maybe it’s the equivalent of a primordial scream, or maybe he is communing with his ancestors, telling them he is on his way. It brings us to tears.

My sons tell me we should have cataract surgery for him on one eye to enable him at least to see better.

“You’d be howling, too, if you couldn’t see or hear,” they argue. Of course they have a point. But I am afraid, afraid of what Teddy’s reaction to the anesthetic might be, afraid to send him to a place of unfamiliarity, afraid to subject him to invasive procedure.

To further complicate the picture, he has had a seizure. We saw the whole thing. It happened only 10 minutes after the last of our dinner company had left a few weeks ago. He was laying down on his side in his familiar station near the front door when suddenly his legs started flailing at the air, he began panting and saliva started to bubble from his mouth. All we could do was look on in horror for the short time that it lasted. When it was over he became uncharacteristically aggressive for a couple of minutes. Then his breathing slowly returned to normal, and he started walking from room to room. After perhaps 15 more minutes, while we watched with concern, he sauntered over to his food bowl as if nothing had happened and began eating all his dinner, finishing up with a noisy slug of water. Finally he spun around, plopped down and looked at us as if to say, “Why are you following me?”

We called the vet, who seemed much more sanguine than we were and assured us that this sometimes happens to pets, although it had not happened to any of our preceding three dogs. She put him on meds to prevent another seizure.

What followed was a trial-and-error course of medication that alternately left Teddy so wobbly that he could barely step off the porch and caused him to sleep constantly, or wound him up so that he howled intermittently through the night, needing reassurance each time that we were there. It was like having a newborn baby in the house demanding multiple feedings.

We’ve finally gotten the right medicines to the right level and life is almost back to normal, but the questions remain: What to do next, and when to do it?

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I was making a supermarket list the other day. It had the usual items: eggs, milk, cereal and yogurt. Then it occurred to me that we could use a box of low-fat, high-fiber humor.

Yes, I know Nestlé, Keebler and Procter & Gamble don’t make boxes of such guffaw and giggle-inducing goods. Sure, they have cute animals who endorse their products, offering us a pleasant image while we shovel the latest sugar-filled calorie bomb into our mouths, feeding addictions that satisfy our taste buds even if they push out our stomachs.

But what we need these days, particularly as we confront our differences regularly, is a shared laugh.

Americans may be innovators, we may have significant military might and we may be a beacon of democracy, most of the time, but we also have a long and comforting history of humor.

Back when my father was terminally ill many years ago, I recall sitting with him in a living room with dark wallpaper, watching “The Court Jester” with Danny Kaye. As Kaye was struggling to remember where the pellet with the poison was, my father broke into a smile, laughing through a scene he’d watched dozens of times.

Laughter, as the saying goes, is the best medicine. After all, actor Tom Hanks was in the TV show “Bosom Buddies” and the game show “Make Me Laugh.” He took serious roles later and has become the go-to guy for dramas like “Bridge of Spies,” but he attracted attention in his early years by dressing as a woman to live in a cheaper apartment building. He was even the star of the forgettable comedy “Bachelor Party.”

Sure, these days “Saturday Night Live” is making some people laugh. Even White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer appreciated Melissa McCarthy’s anger-ridden impersonation of him.

Now, President Trump doesn’t seem to be doing much laughing.

I suppose it’s tough to laugh on Twitter, unless you’re fond of the LOL or that emoji with the hands on the face. How much coverage would a presidential tweet about an intentional act from Kellyanne Conway get?

Remember back in the 1980s when, in the midst of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan would assure us that we could sleep well at night because he clearly did. If he wasn’t especially worried, and he wasn’t looking harried the way his predecessor did, surely we could sleep well? After all, resting and relaxing were a part of life, even during the Cold War. He smiled, he waved and he had everything under control, offering an easy laugh during tough times.

Trump has reason to smile. No matter what The New York Times, CNN or other news organizations he hates write about him, the stock market loves his laissez-faire policies toward business and regulations.

But Trump doesn’t seem pleased or to be riding a wave of good feelings and good humor. He needs to laugh with us as much as we need to laugh with each other. Of course, he needs to do his job, take his responsibilities seriously and do what he can to deliver on his promises. After all, even the world-is-coming-to-an-end New York Times would have to write about more jobs and greater prosperity for America.

Maybe, along the way, though, we could all use a good group giggle. The TV programmers understood the value of a guffaw long ago. They put talk show hosts on late at night because that’s when we need to chuckle the most, before we go to bed. Seinfeld, the cast of “Friends,” and many of our former acquaintances from sitcoms offer a comforting shield against the worries, anxieties and frowns that pester us during the day.

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Photo courtesy of Three Village School District

By Michael Tessler

Throughout our brief but impactful history, America’s protesters have accomplished quite a bit. From the Sons of Liberty dumping nearly $1.7 million worth of English tea into Boston Harbor (talk about destruction of property) to Dr. King sharing his dream during the March on Washington. Protests, petitions, walkouts and other acts of civil disobedience certainly have earned their chapter in the American story, not always for good reasons, unfortunately.

My first protest was back in 1999 at Scraggy Hill Elementary in Port Jefferson. Things, as you may remember, were a bit simpler back then. Before the advent of social media, before digital petitions and fake news blogs we were forced to have conversations with one another.

Esther Fusco, my former principal, had an office tucked away behind the school’s reception area. Inside she had an old-fashioned metal candy dispenser that only accepted pennies. Whenever you were called into her office, she made sure you got to crank out a handful of M&Ms. Between that and her famed “Star Assemblies,” there was a lot to love as a student.

Unfortunately, for reasons beyond the comprehension of a six-year-old, Dr. Fusco had her assignment changed by the school board and was no longer working in the school. When I heard she was gone, I went home and asked quite innocently, “Where’s Dr. Fusco?” That unknowingly became the rallying call for the first protest I ever participated in.

My mom, an impassioned activist for early childhood education, organized with other community members to picket, protest and attend meetings. This was an extraordinary lesson in civics for a little boy and one that I treasure to this day. You can imagine my excitement when almost 20 years later I hear about petitions circulating through Ward Melville High School. Young people were speaking up about an issue they were passionate about.

The new cap and gown style at Ward Melville High School. Photo from Three Village School District

To provide a bit of context, Ward Melville’s principal introduced a new uniformed graduation gown that combines the school’s signature green and gold. In the past, they had been separated by gender. However, with the school’s growing transgender and gender-fluid population, they wanted to adjust with the times. Naturally, there was pushback as it was altering a 50-year tradition.

What should have followed was a debate on the BEST method to preserve tradition while accommodating changing times and the needs of the student body. What actually transpired was unfortunately quite the opposite. Petitions began to grow and with them hateful comments about transgender and gay/lesbian individuals.

During a student walkout, several students held up signs saying “STRAIGHT LIVES MATTER” and imagery often associated with the former Confederate States. There’s a fundamental difference between fighting for tradition and using the guise of tradition as a means of marginalizing another group.

Here’s the unfortunate reality: 41 percent of transgender youth and 20 percent of gay/lesbian/bisexual youth will attempt suicide at some point in their lives. Just for perspective, 4.6 percent of the general population will attempt suicide. Words matter, and if you’re wondering how those numbers got to be so staggering, look no further than the comments on some of these petitions.

If someone is willing to keep something like that a secret for their whole life, if the pain of that secret is enough cause for them to take their own life, then who the heck am I to question who they are and why? We were not born wearing blue or pink. We were born human beings and being human isn’t always easy so let’s stop making it harder on each other.

Nonviolence and peaceful demonstrations remain the second greatest force of change in this country next to democracy itself. To my young friends at Ward Melville, on all sides, keep fighting for what you believe in. Do so however, while showing respect and civility. You are stewards not just of your own rights, but those of all Americans. Just remember, “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”

Seriously though, where is Dr. Fusco? If anyone sees her, please tell her Michael Tessler sends his regards. I’m 18 years overdue for some M&Ms!

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Thank you, Itzhak Perlman. It was a fabulous concert by the superstar violinist last Saturday night at Gala 2017 held at Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts. And besides the music, of Vivaldi, Beethoven, Schumann and Stravinsky, there was pleasure in just being in Perlman’s company. He produces extraordinary music in a most relaxed, unaffected and joyful fashion. His face, known for its elasticity, changes expression as he plays the notes, encouraging the listener not just to hear but also to feel the elegant sounds.

Perlman was 3 years old and living in the newly created state of Israel when he heard classical music on the radio. He asked for a violin but was turned away from the Shulamit Conservatory, which his father had brought him to, because he was pronounced too small to hold a violin. Instead he was given a toy fiddle and taught himself to play until he was finally accepted.

When he was 4, he contracted polio and in time was able to walk with crutches, but he plays seated on an electric scooter that he uses to get around the stage. He gave his first recital at 10 and not too long afterward came to the United States and to Juilliard. By 1958, when he was just 13, he appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and then went on tour with “The Ed Sullivan Caravan of Stars” across the country. In 1963 he debuted at Carnegie Hall and a year later won the prestigious Leventritt Competition before embarking on an extensive performing and recording career.

Perlman is known as a violinist, conductor, teacher and speaker, the last sometimes on behalf on those with disabilities. He usually performs as a soloist, accompanied by the gifted pianist, Rohan De Silva from Sri Lanka. But Perlman has shared the stage with many of the world’s greatest musicians, including Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Isaac Stern and his friend and fellow violinist, Pinchas Zukerman. He has collaborated often with screen composer John Williams and plays the score for “Schindler’s List” in the movie, as well as that of “Memoirs of a Geisha” and other films. He even did a stint with the Muppets on “Sesame Street.”

Perlman has played with or conducted some of the great orchestras performing classical music. He also loves klezmer, a Jewish folk music, and jazz. What is not so well known is that he can sing. He actually sang the role of the jailer in the opera “Tosca,” alongside Placido Domingo and conducted by James Levine. At another time, he sang the same part, joining Luciano Pavarotti with Zubin Mehta conducting. That’s keeping pretty good company.

Known for his charisma and humanity, Perlman and his wife Toby — also a violinist, who he met in high school — started the Perlman Music Program that is housed in Shelter Island. There gifted young string players attend summer camp and mentoring programs. The Perlmans have five children and live in New York City.

Over the years, Itzhak Perlman has won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest honor for a civilian, and the National Medal of Arts with numerous Grammy and Emmy awards. He has performed several times at the White House and all over the world, perhaps most notably in the Eastern European bloc countries with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1987 before the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union in 1990, also China and India in 1994. He won over those audiences with his elegant yet seemingly effortless technique, his affability and humor, as he so totally did with us in Stony Brook this past weekend.

Thank you Staller director, Alan Inkles, and the rest of your staff of hardworking magicians, for a memorable night.

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Remember those punching dummies from years ago? They were like Weebles wobbles, where you could smack them as hard as you wanted and they would come popping up for more.

I think we need some kind of equivalent device for modern technology. Sure, cellphones allow us to talk to each other from anywhere in the world, see each other’s faces and share pictures on our way to school, to restaurants or to the most mundane places, but they and their cousins, the computers, can also be like sand in the bottom of our socks.

My daughter sends pictures of herself from the car to her friends. Why? What do they see in these pictures? In many of them, she doesn’t even seem to be centered and her eyes are closed — maybe that’s a generational complaint. Anyway, if these friends were in the car with her, they wouldn’t be looking at each other. Rather, they would be sending pictures of themselves to other people in other cars. Modern technology has encouraged parallel play to such an extent that phone users prefer to interact from afar. When I see my daughter smiling at these ridiculous pictures while mumbling something incoherent to me, I’d like to remove the phone from her hand and toss it out the window.

It would cost way too much money to do that every time she annoyed me and, worse, I might hit someone with her phone.

That’s where the new device comes in. I’d like to have some version of her phone that I could pretend-smash into a thousand pieces.

That frustration doesn’t just involve technology with my children. I have had numerous problems with my computer when I’m on deadline and I can’t afford to stare at a colorful circle that’s freezing my system or a cursor that refuses to respond to my movements across the page.

Sometimes, I feel as if technology is experimenting with me. There’s someone sitting behind a monitor, using my phone or computer’s camera and is waiting for just the moment when I have no extra time and is sending a “kill” signal to my computer.

“Wait, no, no, no!” I shout at the disobedient machine. “Please, please, please, I have to send this now.”

“Heh, heh, heh,” a mischievous elf who decidedly does not work for Santa Claus is thinking as he watches my panicked face.

Instead of pushing the same unresponsive button a thousand times, I’d like an inflatable computer that I can throw across a room, kick as hard as I can or punch without injury. I’d also like to hear the sound of breaking glass as I’m doing it, as if the destructive force I’m applying is somehow damaging the computer as much as it’s upsetting my psyche.

I know breaking real glass and destroying real technology would not only be bad for me and my bank account, but it would also create waste and pollute the environment. I need something that can give me the faux satisfaction of my caveman instinct to strike back at something that’s bothering me.

I can type pretty quickly on my computer, but my thick fingers and the small keyboard on a smartphone, coupled with a spell-checker that hates the last names of my contacts, are a combustible mix. Maybe the next time the computer autocorrects something and then adds an error, I can hit a button that can give me a virtual sledgehammer so that I can virtually shatter my screen into a million pieces. Of course, I’d need the phone to work almost immediately after that because someone, somewhere needs me to send a “LOL” to their mistyped text message.

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Then there is the matter of passwords. In a life that I am forever trying to simplify, passwords are the detritus on the highway. The need for them trips me up, interrupts my momentum, as I am tooling along.

Am I the only one with this frustration?

Let me illustrate by repeating some of the inane conversations on the subject. I call my credit card company to get some information. When I am lucky enough to get through to a live, warm-bodied person, he or she will ask the dreaded question: “What is your password?” “Could you give me a hint?” I ask, since upon the advice of experts, I try not to use the same password more than once. “It might be the name of your dog,” comes the sympathetic response — if I am lucky. “My first, second, third or fourth dog?” I ask nervously. We then go through the list if the customer service person on the other end has the patience and feels like prompting me. The response might be, “It starts with a ‘T.’” That only helps 50 percent of the way since two of those four dogs had names that began with T.

Sometimes, after I’ve run down the possibilities to no avail, the nameless, faceless voice at the other end, in a desperate attempt to move along the conversation, might volunteer, “Maybe it’s your mother’s maiden name?” “The last four digits of your Social Security number?” “Your first child’s birthday?” “The last four digits of your first phone number?”

And so it goes, with ultimate success possible but not assured. By this time, several minutes have elapsed, during which I could have transacted the business at hand several times over.

I have tried writing down all my passwords. But then where do I keep the list? And protected by what password? The logical place, to me since it is usually with me, is in my cellphone. “Nooo,” caution the experts. “That is the first place a thief would look.”

OK, then, how about in my glove compartment? Being a good suburbanite, I am usually only steps from my car. Again, that is such an obvious place that, like my vehicle registration, such a list should be kept anywhere but there — despite the logical need for one’s registration when in one’s car.

But I digress, probably due to the stress of the challenge at hand. Forget about car registrations. Back to the urgent subject of passwords.

We are advised never to use the same password twice or, heaven forbid, multiple times, because once our code has been broken, our whole lives and assets lie open to villains.

We are also advised to change our passwords often. Oh, please, have mercy! If I can’t remember the original passwords, how can I reasonably be expected to remember subsequent generations of passwords? They are not like children and grandchildren after all.

I am anxious about the future use of passwords. Will I be expected to know a password to shop in the supermarket? To shop online, it’s already come to that. I can’t get on my computer without my password, so no online shopping. How about filling up the tank with gas? We already must provide our ZIP codes, but that may turn out to be too broad a code. How about to visit an emergency room? Oh, but wait. We already have to produce the qualifying information on our identification cards. But if they need to follow up with the insurance company, we had better know our password before the ER can go any further. But not to worry. We can’t get to the ER anyway because we are unable to gas up the car.

This leaves me wondering: Do our passwords keep the rest of the world out or, once forgotten, do they lock us in?

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