Anyone who has gone on vacation, been confined to a hospital room or lost all contact with anyone over the age of five can relate to being clueless about current events.

You return home after several days away and flip on the radio, catching a news story in midstream, only to be left scratching your head.

For me, all I heard was "...The governor has asked to be declared a state of disaster but it has not been confirmed."

Who is in a state of disaster? Is it local? What did I miss? My house was standing and I didn't see any other homes laying in carnage on the drive home, so the disaster obviously did not happen locally.

Only later did I learn the whole story, that an earthquake had shook Hawaii.

If only I had been vacationing in Hawaii, I would have been as clueless.

Major news events can occur and you don't have a clue. You are caught up in your own little world as the outside world whizzes by. If you miss a day or two of the news, the western edge of the U.S. could crumble into the ocean, a magic diet pill allowing you to eat anything without weight gain could be invented and the fall elections would be over without you knowing anything about it. (Of course, missing that final issue wouldn't be so bad.)

This is probably considered blasphemy since this column appears in a newspaper, but I regularly go days without catching up on current events.

And this comes from a news junkie.

I "attempt" to read or at least glance at one or two, sometimes three newspapers each day. Sunday is devoted to perusing the oversized Sunday papers. The radio is constantly broadcasting music as well as news. And I'm one of the few younger persons who still tries to watch the nightly news on the national networks.

But, if I'm away from home for a few days and return to a pile of papers on the front porch, they will likely go unread. Sure, I'll scan the headlines, but they quickly hit the recycling bin.

While on vacation, watching TV is shoved to the back burner in favor of partaking in local activities. If I do flip on a TV while on vacation, news programs are forgotten as I search for the Food Network to watch cooking shows with recipes I'll likely never remember

And what about staying up-to-date by listening the radio while driving down the road? Not likely. The time in the vehicle is usually devoted to listening to books on tape or CDs that I don't find time to read at home.

I return home clueless except for a few meals I picked up from Rachael Ray.

But it's not just the absence of news programs which can leave a person feeling isolated. Watching TV can lead you to forget what's going on outside or even worse, forgetting what year it is.

Cable channels can easily enable you to lose track of the time because their shows can be years old without you ever knowing it.

Once again, consider the Food Network. For the most part, recipes don't age so programs about cooking can be shown for years. The biggest giveaway to a show's age is the host's weight gain or loss.

I assume the hosts are trained not to say anything timely which could date the show. If they are making a tasty pork roast on the TV screen, you aren't going to care that 27 inches of snow fell on an unprepared New England.

I now regularly watch the closing credits of these shows because at the very, very end, a copyright date will flash on the screen. At that point, I'm not only able to figure out that the show was taped three years ago, but I'm able to brush up on my Roman numeral knowledge.

(If the numbers/letters dip down into MCMXCVIII rather than MMVI, then I know that the show is older than most of my children.)

I may not know who is at war with each other, but I can tell you how Twinkies are made.

-- Ronda Graff can miss a few days of the news since she has enough excitement around her house with six kids.