You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s Crazy!
Becoming one of your kids. Or worse, becoming one of your kid’s friends!
I found myself walking today with my head down, zombie like, the blue glow of my new BlackBerry soaking my skin like a radon bath.
I had the device clutched between both hands and I was typing something feckless with my thumbs. I was suddenly my daughter, randomly typing garbage into the ether. Like the teens of this new generation, I was lost in an oblivion of stupid.
As you’ll recall, I lost my neolithic cell phone at the water park. Somewhere between gonad’s-run and sweat-roll-island. As you’ll recall, my old “flip” phone was as modern as a sun dial. My cell phone was the romper room of communications doing only the simplest of tasks.
It made calls. It received calls. It turned on. It turned off. It was like first grade math. Simple, uncomplicated.
With my cell phone swimming with the fishes at Pilgrim’s Plunge, I call the Verizon dealer and say: “Brandi, hook me up.”
Brandi is a hot Southern Number, one spit wad away from trailer trash, one chewing tobacco dip away from Hooters girl.
“You got an upgrade,” she says.
“For $129 we can get you a BlackBerry.”
“$129?,” I lament. “My boss is never going to pony up $129 dollars.”
“There’s a $100 rebate,” she says, a burst of hope in her voice. “That’s a BlackBerry for $29 dollars. You can’t beat that deal.”
“Do it,” I said, my eyes opening to the possibilities.
And with that I joined you. I kicked in the door of the new millennium.
I am a 3G soldier able to download web sites and pinpoint myself with GPS. I can instant message Satan and if you are a member of the Verizon network, I can text you non stop, one letter at a time.
You can send me porn and jokes and words of the day. I am so connected, I’m like a made Mafia guy.
Somehow I feel like my life is more exciting, but at the same time, I also feel the digital noose tightening around my neck.
Instead of having no email to check, I now have 3 emails to check. That’s a lot emails for one phone. It’s like a nitro burning funny car of communication. That’s great if the parachuttes deploy after the 1/4 mile, but if they don’t? Well you hit the retaining wall and explode into flames.
My wife is always good for a sour note, and she had this to say when she saw my new phone, and I quote; “now you won’t look so gay with that flip phone.”
Wow. I didn’t know my sexuality was linked to my phone, but then again, when you are a gay flip phoning bastard like me, what I do know could fill a thimble, right.
So now I am like you, or at least like your kids. I am not so gay, and perhaps more technologically sophisticated.
I can stare into my palm pilot and bathe in the blue LDC glow of knowledge like any co-ed in a bar.
I’m not sure my life has been enriched, but I am sure I have exponentially increased my potential to get brain cancer from all the signals now beaming into my device attached to my head.
And that is crazy!