By Scott Schmeltzer, Thanks for Listening

Growing up in the 1970s watching “The Jetsons,” a cartoon like “The Flintstones” but set in the future, I would often think about flying cars and the simplicity of having Rosie the household robot do all of my menial chores like vacuuming, cleaning up after my dog, King, and, of course, cleaning my bedroom.

What if in the future we had all of these cool gadgets to make my life easier and more care free. (Cue cool time warp music as we jump 34 years into the future to the year 2010.)

Hey, wake up, it is 2010 and, wait a minute, is that a flannel shirt? Is that still in style? What gadgets do we now own that have simplified our lives? Cell phones? I would say no to cell phones as now with e-mailing, games, texting, video, songs, and, oh yes, calling people, the phone is much more of a time sap than when we were rotary dialing our friends — if our big sisters would ever get off the phone.

Now patience is not something we need or learn while waiting for a phone call or for our sisters to be off the phone as every darn kid from age 5 on up has a phone these days.

Internet? Again I say no as this machine really just forces us to do more in less time than we had before. We have more information, but the time to use it has not expanded for us so, we end doing more in less time and feeling more rushed than when we did not have the Internet. Whew!

Flying cars? Still, no, but we do have cars that can talk and control everything like your music and backing up, all by just talking back to it. I do not know if this saves time, but it would be great if the car just stopped moving whenever someone would start to text. No time saving here, but I bet a few hundred accidents.

Television? Still no on saving time, but we do have 3D, high-def television. It is weird as we now have hundreds of channels, but the programming is no better than when I was younger and we had three channels. As a matter of fact I would say that we had better programming back in the ’70s.

So 34 years after, and we have no devices that actually save us time. Quite sad when you think about it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you

Thanks to everyone who made the Geri Murtaugh Cancer Benefit such a great success. If you attended, donated, said a prayer or just have kept the Murtaugh family in your thoughts, it all mattered. Last Thursday was a tremendous night of love and generosity that absolutely melted my heart. Thank you from the bottom of my melted heart.

Bonfire friends

I need to do a shout out — or a write out — to Matt and Slim shady (please stand up). These two gentleman I met at a bonfire recently, and they happen to be very funny! Hello, guys.

Twins win!

Great job, Twins, on clinching the American League Central once again! Good luck to Joe Mauer, Jim Thome and the rest of the Twins in the playoffs.

Tribune Publisher Scott Schmeltzer’s column appears every Thursday.