Hold the Phone!

I’ve been wondering, one day will flashlights be obsolete?  Should I put away the one that sits on my bedside table waiting for the lights to go out? And what about cameras? And calculators? Camcorders and voice recorders? Certainly, telegrams and wall phones and phone booths. Now everything is right there on our smartphones. Isn’t it funny how life has changed right before our eyes? It’s amazing how much is held on one small device. 

I remember at the ‘Whalers Motel’ when we got our first portable phone, it was about the size of a loaf of bread. We pulled out the long, silver antenna and my brother Chris and I carefully walked the handset up Long Island Avenue to see at what distance we would lose reception. I believe we got all the way to the Corner Bar! It felt like we were holding some kind of miracle in our hands. I can still see it so clearly in my memory. This new invention was such a help when we were cleaning rooms. We wouldn’t have to run the length of the building to answer the phone anymore. What a great advance in technology. 

Then car phones came on the scene and the very first mobile phones. I vividly remember the first person I ever saw making a phone call from Sagg Main Beach-I honestly thought to myself-what could possibly be so important that one would need to make phone calls from the beach? And now one wonders, what isn’t important enough? I’m not sure if anyone is at the beach without their phone. I also remember the first person I ever saw taking a picture of an item in TJ Maxx to see if the person on the other end of the phone approved of the purchase. I was totally amazed at their skills-and now it seems so common place! “Tom is this the parmesan cheese you wanted?” 

Do you remember the long, winding cords that attached us to our rotary house phones-how tangled and stretched they became? If you had wanted any privacy for your call you might go into the cellarway or somewhere you could shut the door on the cord. Can you remember the sound of the dial and what if felt to watch it spin back and forth with your closest friends’ phone number? Do you still remember that number? But honestly what was there to even talk about back then, the plans for our next tree fort? What homework was due?

And homework, we used to all sit at our kitchen table to get the job done. I wonder how many hours we all spent on homework and memorizing spelling and vocabulary words. Is diagraming sentences now a thing of the past? Long division? All of that too, right there on our smartphones. It seems that we don’t even need to know how to spell correctly anymore-we conjure up a close guess of basic consonant and vowels that might be in the word and ‘poof’ the correct spelling appears.

I remember so clearly sitting at my ‘electric’ typewriter trying to type out research papers for high school and college…the frustration of making a mistake and starting all over again-the wasted sheets of paper and then the ‘white-out’, and the little powdery white sheets you put onto the roller to try to strike out mistakes, and then the glorious invention of erasable bond paper. Can you still feel what holding a sheet of that paper was like and the orange box with a flap that it came in? Can you still hear the tap-tap-tap of those keys? 

Our laptops now hold so much power-so much information-so much potential for creativity and growth-it amazes me. Books, classes, endless research information, music, graphics-one could create an entire symphony on Garage Band, write and publish a novel on Word, direct a video on iMovie, create art, edit photographs, get a doctorate degree, learn to sew, knit crochet, play an instrument, do yoga-become a yogi, the possibilities are seriously endless. It’s difficult to think of an exciting gift for our nieces and nephews as most of what they seem to need and how they spend their time is right on their devices. Are there such things as toyboxes anymore? ‘Toys-Used to Be-Us’? 

Tom and I wonder if when you reach a certain age-you start ‘feeling’ all of the changes around you. We’ve lived long enough to create and measure the distance from then to now. Did old gladiators wonder about the outfits the new gladiators were wearing? Are we just at a point that we can viscerally recognize and experience those changes? 

What will the mind be challenged by in the future? If technology continues to advance at such a pace, what will the human brain be responsible for? Original thoughts? Feelings? Creativity? Will computer chips be installed to hold our memories? We can only imagine what might be coming next-so I’ve decided to just enjoy the here and now - to enjoy the advances but not let them take me over-to try and remember what it felt like to be hiking in the woods without my cell phone-to disengage from time to time. 

I believe there is some reason we are born when we are-to experience this life here and now-and not in the past or the future. Modern innovations hold many advantages but I believe it is essential not to let them take you over. It is important to know how to turn-on your cell phone-but it is equally important to know how to turn it off.