Today I walked by a plastic fish, and it sang to me.

I was quite startled as you can imagine, since this is not the experience I normally expect to have when I am dropping off a prescription at the pharmacy.

I glanced at its sign as I was walking quickly by (you don’t want to stand too close to your singing plastic fish until you know exactly what is going on) and it said something like, “blah, blah, the benefits of taking fish oil.”

That experience got me to thinking, as this is not the first time I’ve had animated plastic figures sing to me about important health related information.

My grocery store has a large display of vividly colorful plastic fruits and vegetables located directly above the produce department. They too have a song, all about the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, which is performed in a catchy reggae style complete with steel drum accompaniment.

5 a day, 5 a day,
We all know it’s the healthy way,
Fruits and vegetables,
They’re OK,
The healthy way,
Eat 5 a day.

This song has penetrated my brain, much like some kind of musical virus, to the point where occasionally my husband will look at me with an extremely furrowed brow and ask incredulously, “Are you singing the Kroger produce song?!”

So now I’m wondering what all of this means. Have the Powers That Be decided that we as a people are incapable of knowing how to take care of ourselves? Or that we are too defensive at the slightest hint that someone might be telling us what to do? So now they have to pipe in important information as a kind of subliminal background track to our daily lives, using the most innocuous, non-threatening characters they can find? Do they think that we have collectively become that dumbed down, with the attention span of a gnat?

These are important questions that need answering, and I plan to pursue them just as soon as-oh look, a bird! It’s so pretty.

Um, what were we talking about?