When I was much younger and living in Kansas City, we had a neighbor named Lee. He lived in the house right next to ours.

Occasionally he would drive us around because, for a whole summer, our station wagon was in the shop. A guy had hit us while we were visiting our grandparents a few hours away. So for about three months or so, we had no car. That summer, like most summers, my dad was in New Mexico helping out his family's business. We stayed in Kansas City. We rode the bus sometimes. We walked almost everywhere.

But sometimes Lee would take us places in his Jeep. It had to be Army surplus or something. There were no doors on the jeep--no seatbelts either. When we asked what would happen if our mom fell out (she would sit up front and us kids would be in the back), he said he would stop the jeep and go pick her up. He told us he usually didn't go and pick up people who fell out of his jeep, but for us, he'd go get our mom.

Mom never fell out of the jeep.

Once, we went to McDonald's. We weren't going to eat our food there, but when asked if we wanted it for here or to go, Lee said "Here." We were puzzled, but didn't say anything in front of the counter person.

When our food came, he went to where you drop off the trays, took our food off, handed a bit of it for each of us to carry and then left the tray. We walked out of McDonald's, holding our food in our hands instead of in bags.

Lee explained getting something to go was more wasteful because of all the paper bags necessary to carry everything.

"What's the first thing we'd do when we get home? Throw the bags away. So if we just carry everything and not take the paper bags, we've saved a little bit of a tree." I'm paraphrasing here.

Now I get things to go all the time. Mostly at lunch for work. If I'm out eating in the evening, we eat wherever we are. But at lunch, I almost always get it to go. I don't eschew the bags. It's a pain in the ass to try and keep everything together (if there are fries, hell, its impossible) without a bag.

But I don't go through the drive-thru either. I walk in and get stuff to go. So I get asked "here or to go" all the time. What I do sometimes is see what the car at the end of the drive-thru line looks like and then, when I leave, see if the car is still in the drive-thru line. More often than not, I beat the car that's in my theoretical place in the drive-thru.

Drive-thrus are supposed to be about saving time. But really, its about not getting off your fat ass and taking a little walk inside. We have lots of things now that are supposed to save time, but are really about sitting on your ass more than walking around.

Tivo is supposed to streamline your TV watching, but according to reports, it makes people watch more TV than they did before getting it. Fat asses are getting fatter.

E-mail is supposed to make communication efficient, but sometimes I deal more with e-mail than I do with actual work. The insistent ding of a new e-mail wrenches me from my work, lots of times so I can see a picture of a dog taken with a wide angle lens.

High-speed Internet is about spending less time connecting to things on the web, so you can enjoy the web more. Which means, basically, it speeds things up so you can spend more time doing more things on the web. Another hour sitting on your ass.

For here or to go? Isn't all of this to go? Aren't we taking all of this with us when we leave? Won't it all end up at home, which isn't here at all. But then, it's not to go once I get here.

And really, we don't take any of this with us. It gets used up in less time than it takes to get to me. We consume and throw away the remains.

We flush it down the toilet--which is definitely designed to go. But we do this here and then send it on its way. To go.

At least we don't shit in paper bags.

Matt Worley would like to be here more often, but sometimes he's just got to go.