Hell is experiencing a light frost. Dogs and cats are finalizing their Anti-Animosity Treaty. And sharks have voted on it and decided to go vegan...
Yes, the world is topsy-turvy, and the impossible is now:
I have finally purchased... a cell phone.
I know; I am the last hold-out on the entire planet. These days, babies are handed a cell phone and given their Daytime Babble Minutes the moment they make their goopy grand entrance.
Toddlers are texting, plotting their next Chuck E. Cheese adventures and conferring on potty successes.
Dogs are barking into their Flea-Mobile wireless saying, "Red Rover, Red Rover, walkies on over?..."
And then there's me. Cell-phone-less. Fervently combating the laws of probability that I would never... oh... completely lose my traveling dad on Christmas Eve, somewhere between Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Upper Tarnation, USA...
Or that I would take up residence in Panera waiting for someone so long, management sprinkled me with sesame seeds and slapped on special Day-Old pricing...
(There were no takers.)
Or that I would never get stuck in the middle of a 15th century Ren Faire field with a broken down electric carriage, and no Ye Olde Steed-4-Let in sight.
It was this last incident that served as Her Majesty's Wake-Up Herald on the matter.
I suppose I should explain that my resistance to the technology all this time had been more of a frugal and self-preservationist nature than techno-fear...
For years, I'd worked for a Bill Lumberg type, a driven fellow who thought nothing of tracking me down to my parents' home in New Jersey on Thanksgiving Day to ask me about a project...
Who was at a tradeshow in England and decided it would be okay to ring me up--- 2 a.m. U.S. time-- just to "test the phone."
Who called HR twice because my hour-long, pre-scheduled dentist appointment was apparently taking too long.
Being reachable 24/7 would have had me a cell, all right-- a softly padded cell with stylish, comfy jackets that were just a skosh long in the sleeves.
But now that I have changed jobs, and cell phones come with "I Only Want to Use This Every Other Month With an 'R' In It" Plans, I have seen the light.
Of course, this also means I may have to make a few other changes:
- Switch from dial-up, where my computer was powered by three really energetic hamsters-on-a-wheel (cheers to you Squeaky, Hammy and Kenneth), to something that allows me to watch a 30-second YouTube video in under 12 hours.
- Contribute to American unemployment, by letting my fleet of carrier pigeons go. I'm sorry for the downsizing, but these things must be done in the name of progress. Please: no flaming comments from the Pigeon-American community. They're getting a nice severance package, after all.
- Shift from an abacus to one of those freaky new-fangled calculators. I'm going to miss this one in particular, since the six-foot wooden abacus looked so stylish in my livingroom, and the Chinese wisemen I brought in to consult around tax-time each year were some super-fun guys. "Chow har kew?" "Fine thanks, and how've you been?"
Jenny's gonna be pissed. But... that severance package. It's a good'n.
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Today's question: are you a late or early adopter of new cool technologies? And have you ever used an abacus or carrier pigeon?
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