h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That is the trouble with both past and future - they are vague because of distance. The present is the only place you don't need your glasses or a pair of binoculars, to make sense of what you see. Understanding what things mean in the present is more important than what they meant or could mean in the future. For instance if you don't understand a warning sign and fall down a cellar (something I have in common with the young girl mentioned at the end of this piece), then this is what illiteracy and not using your own senses does for you: I was warned verbally about the cellar but didn't equate it with my senses, so charged past the lorry driver who warned me and plunged into oblivion. I was carrying two wooden trays, full of coke bottles at the time. Miraculously one was left standing in the middle of the bottom tray and nothing was broken, not even my shins (or bruised for that matter, except my pride).