Let us harken back to the flying alarm clock. I discovered it about seven years ago in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue, and it’s possible you have one sitting by your bed even now – which would be good because it seems to have vanished from the catalogue.

This clock’s premise was and still is simple: you set the clock at night and went soundly to sleep. In the morning, the alarm went off – and that’s where genius took over. That’s because if you didn’t reach out speedily and shut off the alarm, the top part of the clock took off.

It flew about the room beeping and, to stop the noise, you had to get out of bed and snare it in your butterfly net – or simply smash it with a pillow. Those were the good old days.

I say “good old” because those were days of simpler devices that even people like me could understand. To wit, the alarm clock.

But, now, I am faced with complexity. Staying in the bedroom, I have found the sleep sensor, which may well be a capitalized name. It watches over my sleep. It studies my movements and keeps a record of my breathing. When and if I wake up in the morning, I can look back on the sleep I had that night.

Presumably, I can use this data to help me sleep better. Some people may fancy this, but sleep is one of those things I already do quite well. And whenever I had a real job that came with a door and an office, I managed to create a nest that I could use to have a lengthy nap slumped back in an office chair with my feet up on the desk.

Don’t think that I am utterly ignorant of modern devices. I first used computer typesetting in approximately 1982 and I have progressed slowly.

I have had a cellphone for 20 years, but I do admit that it was only a couple of years ago that I found that all those blurs and pictures of the palms of hands that turned up on the phone’s screen were actually photos I had taken by mistake. It never occurred to me that my phone was also a camera.

I am willing to try new electronic gadgets. At least, I was until I opened a catalogue and found a household fixture that stopped me cold: it was, and is, a toilet.

This is actually an area in which I have some expertise. I have seen low-flush toilets and upward-flush toilets. I have inspected any number of composting toilets designed for cottage use and I have ruminated on the electric toilet.

But, now, I have hit the wall. For I have encountered the “smart toilet.” How smart? Well, it comes with a built-in memory and a remote control.

Two features have flummoxed me: I have sat and tried to think what memory function you could wish for in a toilet, and all I can come up with are scenarios that you don’t want to know.

For instance, I step into my sleek, new bathroom, my smart toilet takes a look at me, the lid goes into full lock and the damn thing dials 911. And then I try to reason with it.

See what I mean? If my toilet has memories, I would prefer that it keep them to itself. And should it want to share them with me, it would have to follow me out into the yard, where I would be digging a latrine.

As for remote control, well, if you are a bit afraid of your toilet, you might want to step out of the bathroom, walk down the hall and press the flush button. Or, if you have small children, you might find your toilet the butt of practical jokes.

And I suppose there would be some cachet at cocktail parties when you pull out your remote and say, “Excuse me, but I must flush my toilet.”

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