My family and I exchanged gifts after our Christmas dinner and the first present I opened was a beautiful white cashmere sweater. No one advised me to throw my old sweaters away. Much as I loved this new sweater, I was happy that I could keep all my old comfy favorites, too. Not so with the next gift. For years, I have been ignoring any text messages I received from them on the excuse that my old flip phone made texting difficult, so why not just pick up the phone and call me? Missing the point entirely, they all chipped in and got me an I-phone 8.
After unwrapping it, I held it up between my thumb and forefinger, like a dead fish, and tried to smile. “Cool,” I muttered, “but what will I do with my flip phone?” “Throw It away”, they said in unison. “No one will want it.” Yeah, that was the forward thinking that convinced me to trade my 69 Mustang Mach-1 in for whatever the latest fad some years later. My heart aches when I go to old car shows and see those beauties all lined up like new and worth a small fortune. If only…
Back to this newfangled thingee.” They went to work immediately to set it up, explaining what this app does and that app does and I was like “whatever,” and “hey, there’s a Godfather Marathon coming on in 5 minutes.” So, we put it aside, but not before walking my clumsy chunky fingers through the texting function where every word had to be back-spaced and corrected. They could see my frustration. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,” they assured me.
When they left a few days later, all in the same car, and all carrying their separate iphones, I texted them this: “I’m going out to waser the garpen so don’t text me as I am not taking the phone because I don’t want it to get wef…and I won’t pee it anyway…or hear it.” Okay? Lobe you all, Nan.
And an hour later, this: “I’m going to take a shower so if you were thinking of texting me something, wait about an hour, say…..3:00 o’crock, cause then I’ll be bable to hair the ping, but if you don’t get a repond right away, blame it on my mew conditioner. It’s leaves your hair silkier, fut takes longer to rinse. Better mafe that 3:30 but if it’s importamant, you can always call me…Then the thing will ring instead of ping, right?”
Oops. Water swarm, in I go! Lobe, Nan.”
Followed after the shower by: “I hope you’re not farting to regret this decision. I think it’s so neat that you can know what I’m doing all the time. I’m really beginning to wove it. I’ll text you good morning and good night and fill you in with all my day’s activities and add little red hearts and shit.
Lobe, Nan”
4:15. Going for a fork, talk, walk. (I don’t think my auto correct is fucktioning) Back in 30.
P.S. Some words of wisdom. Never bring a knife to a gun fight. Never give a Smart phone to a sassy grandmother. Over and Out!