The question came up in one of those informal round table discussions at a sports bar: “What are the worst things that have happened to modern man?”



Now right away we were not deep into the conventional kinds of thought processes that would have listed things like the “Holocaust” and “Cancer.” Those kinds of things go without saying.



So I offered two things that I thought had really been bad for us humans — credit cards and food buffets. I got a couple of toasts for my offerings.



Of course one of those involved in our deep thought session wanted me to defend my position as though we were sociology majors taking a coffee break at Harvard.



And since I’ve often contended that one doesn’t have to be Ivy League to think, I explained.



I was a bit older than some of the guys at the round table so I pulled from history. (Actually, the table wasn’t round. It was more oblong. I think if it had truly been round, we would have had to have chosen a moderator.)



I recalled my first credit card. It was a gas station credit card, and it also could be used for certain hotels in Idaho and North Dakota. And you would have thought I was applying for membership into some kind of secret society. I had to provide all sorts of data and I was actually turned down by one company, even though I assured them I didn’t even plan to go to Idaho or North Dakota.



Nowadays, credit cards fill up my mailbox. I’ve been pre-approved for “super duper” credit cards and “super duper with added ingredients” credit cards. I carry more credit cards than I need, and I trash several offers every month.



And I’m really a bad credit card customer. I’ve never paid a dime’s interest on one. I think this has to do with my upbringing during the days of “lay-a-way.” For the younger generations, that’s where you bought something on time, but you didn’t get it until it was paid for — a somewhat old, but very workable concept. Someday, archaeologists may dig up some of it and marvel at it.



I’ve learned that some people simply have no discipline with credit cards. They are so compelled to spend, they buy things they don’t even need. They’ll even buy other people stuff they don’t need.



These credit card junkies don’t do the math on credit card interest rates and they are not aware until it’s too late that not all of the black holes are out in space. More and more we read of personal financial disasters linked to credit cards. Not surprisingly, we’ve never read of disasters linked to lay-a-ways.



Now to the buffet lines. Here’s where I have a discipline problem.



All-you-can eat for one price remarkably parallels a national trend of us all getting fatter.



It’s very difficult for me to go to a buffet line and just eat what my body needs. At that point I get into wild rationalizations. I mean I’m staring at all that fried chicken, and I think that Korea might just pop off one of those nukes at any minute and I would have deprived myself of a glorious last meal.



Or, a mad gunman could come running into this place and really make a mess of all that catfish and cole slaw. And that would be a shame, of course.



Now I don’t expect credit cards nor buffets to go away. We like them both too much. But since I’m in control on the credit card issue, I rationalized that one out of two isn’t bad in this analysis. So I turned the floor over to someone who offered soap operas as somewhat of a social pock mark.



I toasted his observation and re-declared for myself that two out of three is pretty darn good.



Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. E-mail: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com