Like yours, my smartphone is so much more than a telephone. It’s where I check Facebook,
Instagram, my email, the weather, and the
stock market. If I’m not listening to the radio, Spotify provides the rest of
my music. Its GPS is indispensable. It’s where I read the national news. When I travel by air, I use the app to track
my flight (is it on time? Which gate and is it still at the same gate?
Estimated time of departure). And I'm just getting started. If that is not enough uses for this little black
box, what about Google? Once years ago I started a sentence with “I wonder…”
and my 20 something son said, “Dad, you have a smartphone. You don’t have to
wonder about anything.” But when I leave
it at home, like I did a couple of hours ago, of all of its uses, it became just a telephone.
If you’re older than 65, like me, you remember when a cellphone was just a telephone. The phone
itself was as big as a brick and weighed about as much too. Service was spotty
at best. If I was in a city or close to an interstate, I had pretty good
service. Other than that, not so much. So today I got everything together to go
to the gym. Car keys, wallet, lock, headphones. I’m ready to go. At the gym as
I was putting everything in the locker, I realized that I didn’t have my smartphone. Only in this case, its absence was just a
phone. I began to run all sorts of awful scenarios in my mind. “What if my wife needs me and can’t find me?
She doesn’t even know I’m at the gym.” “What if anybody else needs me and can’t
find me?” “What if I have a flat tire on the way home?” “Or my car breaks down?
Do people still actually stop to help
someone who’s stranded?” “Or what if I have an accident?” ”What if I get in a
traffic jam?” “What if…?” “What if…?”
“What if…?”
“Ok” I said to myself. “Probably none of these things is
going to happen. And if it does happen, I probably will eventually find my way
home and not die of starvation or exposure. My wife can probably survive
without me for an hour or so”. I also found comfort in the fact that I was, after all, less
than five miles from home.
As it turned out, the gym music was fairly sedate and I got
along just fine without Spotify. On the way home, I didn’t have a flat tire; I
didn’t break down. I didn’t have an accident; I didn’t get in a traffic jam. It
took me less than 15 minutes to get home. Nothing bad happened and I had no
need for a telephone. When I got home, I immediately found my smartphone and checked
for missed calls and texts, and there were none. Nobody had looked for me or
missed me. It's all good.
So what have I learned from all this? Absolutely nothing. The next time I'm away from home without my smartphone, it will be as bad or worse.
