Mike Cox When I started the first grade at Alexander Consolidated Elementary School, I had a Lone Ranger book satchel. It was the coolest thing in Centreville, Alabama. Not a major accomplishment, but still.

The case was made of plastic but looked to me like Corinthian leather. There was a color picture of the Lone Ranger and Silver with Tonto in the background. Both of them were smiling. I guess this was before LR figured out what Kimosabee meant.

The entire outer edge was lined with silver bullets. Like I said, it was the coolest thing going. I’m not sure when I got it, or where. I just remember having it to keep my stuff in. I had a jar of glue, a ruler, some paper, and several of those fat pencils everyone used in the first grade.

As I moved through school, my load decreased, and my book satchel disappeared. By my sophomore year, the only boys carrying book cases of any kind also wore slide rules on their belts and had pocket protectors.

I started thinking about my Lone Ranger book satchel a few weeks back when I saw someone walking into a bowling alley. Their ball was in a carrying case on wheels like people use at airports.

I think that’s a little too much. It isn’t that far from the parking lot to a bowling lane, and the ball’s not that heavy. Besides, isn’t the guy going to be slinging it down the alley 30 or 40 times later that evening?

For all of us, there is a signal, a breaking point, a screaming sign that things have progressed a little too much. When we are too lazy to carry a bowling ball into the alley, that moment has arrived for me.

I’ll give you individual bat bags for little leaguers. Those make the pint sized athletes feel cool. I don’t have too much heartburn watching someone strap a carry–on bag, a laptop, and a purse on a cart and pull it down the moving sidewalk at the airport. I do get a little uneasy when that same person tries to lift it and place it into the overhead compartment directly above me.

But there comes a time when convenience goes too far. Since we dwelled in caves, man has had to do some heavy lifting. We used our brains to figure how to lift extra heavy stuff and just risked a hernia to lift the rest. If we have come to the point where someone puts little wheels on everything, when we no longer have to strain, mentally or physically, then nothing is worth sweating for.

Before you know it, all cars will have power steering, locks, windows, and seat adjustments. People will clog store aisles with baby carriages. Mall parking lots will be littered with shopping carts of people too lazy to walk back to the front of the store. Drivers will circle endlessly waiting to get a prime vacant spot.

In short, we will become a nation of wimpy, passive, obese beings incapable of doing anything physically demanding. I hope I never live to see such a world.