The Computer in My Pocket

I will admit to probably being the only person in the world who consistently wears a pocket watch and carries an iphone.

I like the pocket watch; it was a gift from my Granddaughter, and it has a small picture of her inside.

I like the iphone too, although I won’t say it often; especially around my kids.

For years I carried an old Nokia. Greyscale screen, no pictures, no music, one or two crappy games, but it did what a phone is supposed to do- it MADE PHONE CALLS!!!

Then my kids started getting phones. They had all the toys on ‘em. And I would always comment- when they failed to call home or report in at the specified time- ‘Nice device. Can it MAKE A PHONE CALL!?!?!?’

And now I have an iphone, and it drives them crazy. I carry some of my favorite music around, take pictures of things I find interesting and have downloaded a few apps I think are neat. If I can’t remember some archaic factoid, I can Google it.

There are a couple of faults, and they are basically issues because this is an Apple product. Why can’t I get the Adobe Flashplayer? Why no verbal turn by turn directions? I mean, this thing can track me as I move around my backyard, for craps sake, why can’t it merge the directions and the GPS?!?!?

But, as they say, ‘There’s an App for that’. Yeah, for twenty bucks.

Okay, they do have some cool apps. I like the level. Yeah, like a real (and fairly accurate) level. I got the free one. I ain’t ready to cough up 2 or 3 bucks for the whole app.

Plus I got a couple of books in a kindle like app, but reading anything on this small screen is like trying to read a newspaper through a keyhole. A short story is fine, but War and Peace would probably drive me insane.

I also have an app that basically turns my phone into a transistor radio. For those of you too young to understand that concept a transistor radio was the first radio small enough to fit in your pocket. As long as you had a big pocket.

My son and I took a road trip the other day and we were running through the wilds of West Virginia, listening to a radio station from Atlanta, on the car stereo, through my phone.

That still blows my mind. I guess that means I’m old.

Oh, and I use it to make phone calls.

My eldest thought he would throw me a curve the other day by sending me a text. I blew his mind and sent him one back.

But I don’t twitter. I’m a little too verbose for that.