Just What Lazy Americans Need

Remember when I was in elementary school and we kept hearing about the Japanese and how they were kicking our asses on the world stage because they went to school year ‘round and apparently that was the key to learning your times tables and subsequently taking over the world?

“We need to be more like the Japanese! Kids in Japan go to school all year! They know what our state capitals are better than our American kids! They know the new math! They’re inventing the newer math! To keep up, we’re going to have to push our kids to be more competitive, more driven, or we’re all going to be speaking Japa日本語- - oh crap, too late!”

Not to spread stereotypes, but when I lived in Virginia, I got my hair cut by a woman who worked 7 days a week and would take an appointment any time of the night or day, within reason. She was out-styling the other hairdressers. On her breaks, instead of having a smoke or a cup of coffee, or eating food like the other girls, she would go out into the back alley and do calisthenics. 

“She’s Japanese,” one of the other hairdressers told me when I asked about it. I saw her through the open back door doing arm circles. “The Japanese - when they’re not working their exercising,” she said dryly.

And look at how things turned out. Our ever lethargic, excessive-TV-watching, incessant-video-game-playing, trig-and-calculus-class-skipping, junk-food-eating youth grew up to be the adults who sat back and had another martini, while the Japanese proceeded to buy up all of our companies. 

But then a decade later, the Japanese looked around and realized buying America wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. So they went nearly bankrupt, we snapped out of our funky funk and bought it all back, and that, my friends, is all I need to know about American-Japanese relations.

And even though the Japanese ended up not taking over our country, we are apparently still in the race to beat the Japanese at their own game: Succeeding in school and life.

There are oodles of articles and blogs on the Internet that are titled Why the Japanese Aren’t Fat. 

Enter TrekDesk. If we are going to be more like the Japanese, a good way to start would be to get a TrekDesk. It’s a desk that fits over your treadmill and allows you to walk while you work.

And I thought sitting on my core ball while at my desk was silly.

TrekDesk is the Americans way of telling the Japanese, we’re just as obsessive as you are! We are more than capable of working just as hard as you and keeping fit. And we’ll do you one better: We’ll work at our corporate jobs while we exercise. Gym breaks are for wussies.

TrekDesk is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. 

Worse, I’m afraid my husband is going to want to get one. He keeps threatening to turn our study into a double office, where we both can work. There we’ll be, doing email; me on my core ball and him on his treadmill.

We would be the most ridiculous non-Japanese people ever.

Despite the ads, I don’t think having a TrekDesk would give me “happier workdays.” I can barely keep from rolling off my core ball; I can just see me getting wrapped up in something and forgetting to take a step and falling headfirst into the TrekDesk, which does not have padded edges.

Why can’t we be happy doing one thing at a time, like the lazy Americans that we are?