MOULTRIE — When you have a lot of television channels, you also have a lot of commercials.  And I have to hand it to some advertisers, they provide much information about the product while being entertaining and sometimes offering socially redeeming value.

One of my favorites is an insurance company’s  “safe driver rewards” commercial.

Here’s a family motoring down the highway. The father, who is driving, is talking to himself because everyone else has on headphones.

So he begins talking out loud about his “rewards” checks he gets routinely.  But no one  hears him because they are “lost in space.”

He tells us that his wife doesn’t know he gets this money. (I’m assuming the check must go to his office.) And obviously she can see his lips moving so she nods at him approvingly.

Then he notes that he used some of that money to buy a new putter, and she doesn’t even know about it. Again she nods.

Knowing he has a deaf audience, he says sometimes he leaves the toilet seat up on purpose. Again she nods.

 He is alone in the world.

Not only is this commercial getting its message across, it’s funny. And, it speaks to a human condition these days that’s almost phenomenal.  While these gizmos of modern technology fall into a venue referred to as social media, it would appear to some of us that it’s actually “anti-social.”

Not long ago a friend pointed to two kids sitting at either end of a sofa texting.

“What do you want to bet  they are talking to each other,” my friend said.

We laughed.

Now  I don’t want to be considered an “old fogey” who thinks all new fangled devices are from the devil. Not hardly. I use my I-Phone all through the day. It’s nice to have Google at my finger tips, my emails hanging on my belt, plus the ability to send a brief message and even to make a call.

Google has made encyclopedia salesmen obsolete which, if nothing else, was a major coup in the course of human events.

I’ve even watched a football game on my phone, and it’s a handy little thing when you’re on the dove field and game wardens suddenly appear.

But even so, I still like to have real conversations with people I can interact with. (Yea, I know. I ended a sentence with a preposition. So sue me!)

I’ve long heard of the “art of conversation.” But now I’m afraid it’s becoming a “lost art.”

Also, I’m not sure that texting isn’t diminishing some people’s ability to write complete sentences with correctly spelled words. I guess thoughts are still being conveyed, but some I’ve tried to read  remind me of that movie “Dawn of the Apes,”  where a couple of grunts get translated into a paragraph at the bottom of the screen.

That said, many commercials are not that entertaining nor thought provoking. There’s that one commercial where the two grown men — one a complete doofus — are sitting in their car at a fast foot restaurant discussing the integrity of their hotdogs. (Well at least they are talking and not texting one another.) I’m really tired of that commercial.  In fact, it’s so annoying, I want to blow up my television set with my shotgun.

Oh well, got to go. I’m getting a robo call from New Haven, Conn. I answered this number one day last week, and I could not understand a word the fellow was saying. I asked him if he could slow down and speak Southern. He did, but it was Southern Connecticut.

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)