Editorial

Omg! She didn’t answer!

An interesting item came The Leader’s way early last week from the local RCMP. Besides being good for a few chuckles, it perhaps illustrates something about how our society is changing.
It has to do with the ‘connectedness’ between people, and how many of us have come to take it for granted. Cell phones have been with us long enough for a generation of young people to have no memory of life without them. For them, it is quite normal to be able to reach their friends and family anytime, anywhere.
They not only can do it, they do, pretty much constantly. Any question can be answered; any desire to fill an idle minute with idle gossip indulged.
So what happens when someone suddenly doesn’t answer?
What happens is you panic and call the police. This at least appears to be what occurred, sometime in the period of Jan. 25 – 28.
Responding to the report of a missing person, the Slave Lake RCMP found the young woman at home, taking a bath.
There could be more to the circumstances, of course. But judging by the somewhat dry tone of the police report on the incident, we assume not. It concludes by suggesting, “that it may be a good idea to take the cordless phone into the bathroom when taking a bath.”
Especially if you have friends likely to imagine the worst if you fail to answer your phone. God forbid you should be out of touch for a few minutes.
One can just imagine the text messages flying to and fro:
‘Is she at ur place? No? Omg, something must have happened!’

Political shenanigans
With a provincial and a federal election looming, it is entirely normal to expect politicians to start behaving strangely, and they are. Especially the ones in power who want to stay there.
Funding announcements are delayed to take full advantage of the moment. Why announce something today when you can hold off for two weeks and announce it at the kickoff of the campaign? That sort of thing.
On a positive note, it’s a lot easier to get the attention of one’s elected representatives during election season. They are especially attentive and have been known to make commitments. This is very much to the good.
A cynic could say that they should behave that way all the time, but let us not look a gift horse in the mouth.
A provincial election should be coming up very shortly. The federal one? Some suggest late spring or early summer.
Whenever it is we look forward to seeing our MP again. It’s been so long we fear some constituents may have forgotten who he is.