The Patriots Superbowl 51 win this week seemed impossible to me and I am a true believer. There is no way a team can come back 25 points down late in the 3rd quarter and beat another Superbowl quality team. I was starting to think the whole thing may have been scripted except a couple of extremely critical plays couldn’t be scripted because they required both extreme skill and luck.
I remember the 1969 moon landing. My father kept saying, “They are on the moon. They are talking to people on earth, from the moon.”
I can use my cell phone to see where most known celestial objects are, right now, in relation to where I am, even tho they are invisible to the naked eye. All I have to do is download an app and start viewing; takes a matter of seconds.
Also, the miracle of air travel, and I have never been to a funeral (I am nearly 50).
As a sophomore in high school, I wrote a 35 page report on the film The Magnificent Seven.
It took me many days of research over several weeks to look up books, find periodicals, read microfilm of old newspaper articles, wait for more stuff to come over inter-library loan, etc, etc.
Now I could find all of that information in less than 15 minutes on my phone. When I was a sophomore in high school this was my phone.
Some years ago The Onion published a book, “Our Dumb Century,” featuring supposed newspaper headlines and articles for the entire 20th century. One was from July 21, 1969: “HOLY SHIT - MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON.” The reporting in the article was just as incredulous as that headline, and included equally breathless quotes from the astronauts themselves: “Jesus fucking Christ, Houston. We’re on the fucking moon.” It’s all pretty funny, and yet it somehow accurately reflects how insanely audacious and improbable the whole thing was.
Just the idea of surgery itself seems crazy sometimes. “So, we’re going to cut a giant hole in you, root around in there for a couple hours with a knife, and then sew you back together with some thread.”
I’ve been enjoying Chance the Rapper’s music for a couple years now. He’s got 3 albums out, all of them free digital downloads. He’s been the musical guest on SNL twice in the past year and on as a guest of Kanye. He’s performed at the White House and on most night time and some daytime talk shows. He’s going to be performing at the Grammy Awards and has 7 nominations this year.
All without a label!!
…and you won’t feel a thing!
I just got back from lunch.
To add more detail: I’m off this week, and I’m just doing what I feel like day-to-day. I, a 60 year old woman, drove in complete safety in a comfortable warm Honda, twenty-five miles to an ethnically-diverse city and ate a cuisine which didn’t exist on this continent a hundred years ago. Heck, it probably didn’t exist in this city a couple of decades ago. I found it in a couple of minutes by consulting Yelp, and Yelp didn’t exist a decade or so ago.
On the way back, I took rural roads so that I could look at rain-swollen creeks and rivers that would have been impassable not too long ago. They were frightening torrents today, safely crossed by well-designed bridges.
About 150 years ago, my little lunch trek would have been considered an adventure worthy of Lewis & Clark, and would have taken weeks.
On any given weekend, I can locate a newly-released whisky in Scotland, order it, and be comfortably sipping it by the next weekend. All without magic.
I will always remember the first time I entered the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum years ago. Hanging in front of your eyes was the original Wright flyer, the first powered flight for man. Directly below it was the Apollo 11 capsule that took men from Earth to our species first landing on another celestial body.
Sixty-six years separated them. Sixty-six.
Seems almost impossible, even today.
Forget the giant hole. I had a hysterectomy last year and I have three tiny scars, one in my navel so you technically can only see two, if I told you where to look.
“Sorry I didn’t get that.”
I think I need to see a speech therapist and put more oomph in my voice. 
Even better is when my father says “Fox” and it says
“I don’t respond to that kind of language.”
They cut a hole in me and pulled a baby out, and I didn’t feel a thing, thereby definitely saving his life, and possibly mine as well. He is ten now.
Not so long ago, when a baby couldn’t come out the regular way, the solution was to wait for it to die (and the mother remained in labor the whole time-- occasionally she might get drunk) in utero, and then dissect it by pulling one limb and then the head out at a time, and finally the torso. Often the mother got nicked, and then had to suffer through a staph infection that was awful enough by itself, and if it progressed to septicemia, usually meant death for her as well.
On a happier, baby-related note… Before my son was born, I saw him, moving, on an ultrasound. He was waving his little arms around! Aww…
I just edited this. I remember when changing what I typed meant backspacing to type over it on an electric typewriter. I just moved the entire previous sentence by hitting return twice. Heck, I used to practice on my mother’s old manual typewriter and had to use White Out.
I can speak into my Android, and it will tell me how to say that in Russian. Ho-hum. But I can then repeat that in Russian, and the device understands me speaking Russian and correctly says it in English. That is what borders on the impossible.
Teeth, that’s another one. My grandmother wore dentures. My dad, her son, is older now than she was when she died, and he doesn’t need dentures.
I have a little box in the truck that picks up time signals from a handful of satellites in space*, compares those signals, and figures out where I am, the name of the road I’m on, what direction I’m going, how fast I’m going, and if I’m over the speed limit or not.
Another impossible thing is dogs. They take us into their world, and would kill or die to protect us.
*Of course, the really impossible thing is radio. You have two boxes, separated, with no connection, even with vacuum between them, and you put information into one of them, and it comes out of the other.
Some of the most exciting developments in the automotive industry are from a company mostly known for web searches, that didn’t exist before I was in college. And holy shit, cars can drive themselves.
Also, I can get directions to anywhere at any time, optimized for traffic conditions. Or for fun I can browse a detailed aerial view of anywhere on the planet. On my phone.
I can also download and read on my phone almost any book on the market.
I have instant access to any song I can think of. Plus a multitude of live versions, covers, acoustic cuts, remixes, or whatever.
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I’ve got over 10,000 songs on my phone. I could put 20,000 more on there if I wanted.