First of all, let me say right up front that this is not an advertisement, it’s a grievance, pure and simple. Or perhaps it’s simply an Aesop fable turned on its’ ear and then shaken like a snow globe. I never really wanted a cell phone. It would irritate me to no end to watch people walking around with those blue-tooth (teeth?) contraptions glued in their ears and talking a mile a minute to someone I couldn’t see. I can’t tell you how often I’ve nearly given myself whiplash jerking my head up to see who was talking to me only to discover them with a phone in hand or ear and not speaking to me at all. And watching people driving down the highway with a phone in one hand and the steering wheel in the other always gave me the heebie-jeebies. Talk about a wreck looking for a place to happen!
But I bowed to convention and allowed my younger son and (daughter-in-law) to give me my first and only cell phone. It’s a nice little Motorola with a few apps ( I later learned this meant applications, not a sleep disorder). It took me about a week to figure out how to answer it. I still haven’t mastered how to take a photo. And the other day in a fit of boredom while Mac was in with the Doc I opened a music file to listen to some tunes … and then couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. I finally did learn to pause it so that the others in the room didn’t have to be annoyed by Lady Gaga. I did tell you my son and (daughter-in-law) gave me the phone?
So my older son got a new phone last week. It’s a Droid. I think I have that right, I know it’s made by Verizon. So, he spent the week learning about all it does. It does plenty. I keep hearing little shouts of “wow … look at what it does here!” So, it does things like showing fast food restaurant menus and nutrition values of each item; you can scan a bar code in a store and it tells you the price, but wait a minute … then it tells you where you can get it cheaper! It takes pictures that rival his professional camera and can find obscure music (complete with song name and artist) and then it plays it for you. You take your finger and move over to new pages and its GPS will show you where you are and a satellite picture of the exact spot. It gives you the weather and the temperature where you are standing. It plays a game with you when you are out walking. I think he said it was Escape the Zombies. It shows where zombies might be lurking and which route to take to avoid them. This is not something I would do, I don’t do dark walking. This phone even hooks up to the Internet and does things my computer can’t do. Who knew?
I’m sure that when I next see him, I’ll be hearing about yet another thing that his phone can do that my own phone can’t. I hear from a reliable source that I have a wienie phone that I need to learn to master before considering a new model. But I’m telling you, when he comes in and tells me that there is a “load the dishwasher app” I’m going to be suitably impressed. Oh, and headed for the Droid store.
— Sandi McBride is a resident of Jefferson who blogs regularly and enjoys her garden and her furry and feathered friends. She is a wife and mother of two sons.
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