A Memory that Rings a Bell

I'm currently on my sixth smartphone, some kind of a Samsung that doesn't have a battery that is trying to explode. But when I was a wee slip of a lad there were only cellphones and smartphones and when you said the latter you meant Blackberry with a nod to the new upstart at the time, Apple and the iPhone. 

Turn the page and see where we are now, right? But back in the day I was excited about my Blackberry and called this: 

Paging Mr. Wizard to the White Courtesy Phone

I no longer ever go anywhere without my smartphone, as promised by my son when I got it. I, who went for weeks without even knowing where my cellphone ever was (hint: in the cubbie where we put the opened mail in our kitchen to the left of the back door), now is more likely to nearly forget my wallet than my newest accessory.

And with good reason! My smartphone, probably like yours, has superpowers, if you watch enough of the TV commercials and take three-credit evening course two nights for the rest of your life, "Zen and your Blackberry Tour" or some other such folderol, if only you knew how to harness them. 

That it still takes me forever to figure out how to answer the phone when someone calls me (originally, of course, the whole point behind having a cell phone), is ignored as I struggle to download some Mad Ap that will make me four inches taller, tell me the weather in Dubrovnik or where I can find the nearest gasoline station (that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light just isn't enough of a dead giveaway). 

My smartphone can make movies, take pictures (of course!) record conversations if anyone ever talks to me (an untested capability) and allows me to listen to music and surf the web-among other things (the rest I don't think I understand). 

I even have an application that enables me to follow Bundesliga weekend soccer games and checks all of my personal e-mail accounts at the touch of a button or two and usually more (to be honest). 

I've even learned how to 'text', not like the kids can, of course. I'm too old for that and you have to take Pilates for Thumbs to get the full effect. And tell me there's nothing better than watching full episodes of a show I missed on the TV in my living room by watching it on the one-and-a-half-inch diagonal display on my phone. The Marconi Mafia should have lived long enough to see their handiwork. Yes indeed, to a man with a hammer the whole world is a nail

I don't really understand how I can 'miss' a phone call because I wasn't ideally located in the coverage area or was in a 'dead zone' (who came up with that turn of phrase?) but I can still get text messages. My son, who has his patience, I assume, from his foster father as I had none to give him, has explained the concept to me at least a dozen times. And except that I never understand it, he does a good job of it. 

To me, it ranks up there with the mystery of the Thermos bottle. It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold; but how does it know the difference? 

-bill kenny