Talking Story with Arlo
Turn Down for What
By Arlo Agogo
Old man Jenkins stood in his quiet kitchen at dawn, coffee mug in one hand, the other hovering over the sleek black rectangle that ruled most lives these days. He chuckled to himself, the same raspy laugh that had carried him through sixty-odd years of the world trying to speed him up. “Turn down for what?” he muttered, as if the phone itself might answer back. It didn’t. It just sat there, innocent as a sleeping cat—until it wasn’t.
Back in his twenties,
The push had been relentless and loud in a different key. Get a real job. Climb that corporate ladder like your life depended on it. Make money, and make it fast. Find a nice girl, settle down, become a father, build the perfect family portrait for the holiday card nobody really read.
Society had barked at him like an overcaffeinated drill sergeant: faster, higher, more. Jenkins had tried. He’d run the race, sweated through the suit jackets, changed diapers at 3 a.m., and nodded along at meetings where the only goal seemed to be outpacing the guy in the next cubicle. He’d done the dad thing, the provider thing, the “responsible adult” checklist until the paper was worn thin.
Now, decades later, the drill sergeant had simply traded its megaphone for Wi-Fi and an app store. The demands never stopped; they just got smaller, brighter, and somehow more insistent.
“Subscribe!”
“Follow me!”
“Like this post or you don’t care about me!”
“Reply in the comments!”
“Join the live stream—don’t miss this drop!”
“DM me your thoughts right now!”
Notifications buzzed like a swarm of caffeinated bees trapped in his pocket. Every scroll promised connection but delivered only more noise. More voices. More opinions. More urgent little red bubbles demanding he keep pace with a world that had forgotten how to breathe.
One ordinary Tuesday, Jenkins had simply had enough. He’d already chatted with the neighbor over the fence about the weather and the price of tomatoes. He’d returned a phone call to his daughter—the one he actually wanted to take—laughing about her latest gardening disaster.
He’d even prepped dinner with care: a thick, beautifully marbled ribeye from Creekstone Farms, that premium Black Angus beef raised right here in the heartland on family ranches with respect for the animal and the land.
The kind of steak that didn’t need fancy sauces—just salt, pepper, a hot cast-iron skillet, and a little patience. The marbling promised juiciness and bold flavor that made you slow down and actually taste your food instead of inhaling it between meetings.
He seared it to a perfect medium-rare, let it rest, sliced into it, and savored that first bite while the evening light slanted through the window. No screens at the table. Just the sizzle memory, the rich beefy depth, and the quiet satisfaction of a meal done right.
Then he looked at the phone vibrating again on the counter like an angry Chihuahua that refused to be ignored. And Jenkins did what any self-respecting man who’d already had his fill of human exchange for the day would do.
He turned it off.
Not silenced. Not “do not disturb” with the sneaky little half-moon icon. Off. Power button held down until the screen went black and the cheerful “goodbye” chime faded into glorious silence.
The house seemed to exhale with him.
The next morning, when his daughter called the landline in a mild panic—“Dad, why aren’t you answering texts?”—he answered cheerfully. “Because I turned the damn thing off after dinner, sweetheart. You won’t get a response until tomorrow morning, if I feel like checking then. And that’s it for the day. No emails. No messages. No nothing.”
She laughed, half-worried, half-amused. “Are you okay?
Are you isolating yourself?”
“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p’ with satisfaction. “Not isolating. Not antisocial. I still like people just fine in moderate doses. I waved at Mrs. Alvarez when she walked her yappy little dog this morning. Chatted with the mailman about the new stop sign. Even called old Pete back about that fishing trip we keep planning.
Had my human quota. Talked, listened, laughed a bit. Then I cooked that steak— pork chops tomorrow, maybe—and decided the volume of society had gotten way too loud again.”
He could almost hear her eye-roll through the phone. “Dad, everyone’s connected now. You’re supposed to stay in the loop.”
“Loop’s overrated,” he replied.
“When I was your age they pushed me to go faster for money, status, family, the whole checklist. Now it’s ‘be online, be visible, reply instantly, subscribe to my life.’ Same push, different costume.
I’m pushing back with the world’s most powerful two-letter word: Off.”
Word spread through the family and the neighborhood like a gentle, slightly rebellious breeze. Jenkins became the quirky old guy who only checked his phone once—first thing in the morning, like a responsible citizen who refused to be responsible all day long. After that single glance (usually while sipping coffee on the porch), the device went back into the drawer or, on particularly glorious days, into the breadbox where it couldn’t even pretend to tempt him.
Friends learned quickly. “Don’t bother texting Dad after 7 p.m.,” his kids would warn. “He’s turned down for the night.” Colleagues from his retired life stopped expecting instant replies. The book club adapted; they’d joke that Jenkins operated on
“Jenkins Standard Time”—one check-in per sunrise, and if you needed him urgently, you knew where the porch swing was.
It wasn’t loneliness. Quite the opposite. Mornings he’d sit with the paper (the real one, ink and all), watch the birds argue at the feeder, and feel the day stretch out without a thousand tiny digital tugs on his attention.
Afternoons he tinkered in the garage, read actual books with pages that didn’t refresh themselves, or walked the block and actually noticed how the light hit the maple trees.
Evenings were for real food—maybe those pork chops, brined just right, grilled slow so the natural sweetness and juiciness shone through—and conversation that didn’t compete with pings and dings.
Society kept screaming its updated script: Go faster! Connect more! Be seen! Be relevant! Post your dinner, rate your experience, share your thoughts in 280 characters or less. Jenkins just grinned wider, settled deeper into his porch chair, and pushed back with calm, deliberate effort.
“Off,” he’d say aloud sometimes, like a victorious old lion roaring at the modern jungle. The word felt solid in his mouth. Satisfying. Almost comical in its simplicity. In a world racing toward some invisible finish line of constant connectivity, turning the volume down wasn’t rebellion—it was survival with a side of steak.
He still remembered the exhaustion of his younger years, chasing the next promotion while the baby cried and the bills stacked up. The push had felt endless then. Now the push came in pixels and algorithms, but the exhaustion was the same if you let it in. So he didn’t. He chose the quiet comedy of an old man who’d finally learned the punchline: you don’t have to keep dancing just because the music’s too loud.
Neighbors started dropping by unannounced, knowing they’d find him present,.
His grandkids learned that when Grandpa said “I’ve had enough voices for today,” it wasn’t rejection—it was honesty.
They’d sit on the porch steps, eat slices of that perfectly cooked beef he’d smoke low and slow, and listen to stories from a time before everything needed to be documented instantly.
One evening, after a particularly peaceful day of zero notifications, Jenkins raised his glass of iced tea toward the setting sun.
“Here’s to turning down,” he toasted the empty yard.
“For what? For sanity. For flavor that actually reaches your tongue instead of your timeline. For conversations that don’t need likes to feel real.”
He took another bite of dinner—tender, marbled, unhurried—and smiled at the silence that followed. No buzz. No flash. Just the soft creak of the porch swing and the distant bark of Mrs. Alvarez’s dog.
Turn down for what? Exactly.
Jenkins had spent a lifetime being pushed to conform—first to the fast-track American dream, now to the infinite scroll of digital obligation. Each time, he’d eventually found the same answer: slow down on purpose. Savor the good beef.
Talk to the people right in front of you. Return the calls that matter.
Then, with a deliberate thumb on the power button, push back.
Off.
Groove is in the Heart - Arlo
