“BBRrrriiinnngggrrrrRrrrrriiiiG!”

A really huge company named after a popular fruit has released a phone, and it’s caused quite a stir.  I guess it’s quite a phone, with all kinds of gadgets that can do all kinds of things and, better yet, you can download things from the interwebz for the phone to do if it’s something the phone doesn’t already have.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be anything useful either; my friend Cali Lewis the Geek Chick bought one of these fruit phones and downloaded a thing where you put all these animals in line as a puzzle, like bears next to bears and ducks next to ducks and so on.  Now THAT sounds damned exciting!

I don’t have one of these fruit phones, nor do I plan on getting one. First of all, I can’t afford it.  As I said, it does all kinds of stuff but some of the stuff it does they charge you for.  I don’t think they charge you for the little animal game — it’s perfectly free to get all your ducks in a row — but they charge you extra for accessing the interwebz from it and downloading nifty things and sending videos and all of that.  I just use my little phone to make phone calls, and that’s rare in itself.

At the risk of sounding all old and fuddy-duddy, I’d like to hearken back to simpler times, when phones were just phones.  You called someone and talked. You didn’t take pictures with them, or videos or play animal games — you just picked up the phone, dialed, and when someone answered you had a conversation.

My mom, who packed up and left this planet in 1993, was as far from a technophile as one could get.  I had to program her VCR for her, and show her how to step through the channels to watch live TV.  She never recorded anything — she just had a VCR because someone gave her one, and she’d occasionally watch an old movie on VHS tape, but she hated rewinding, pausing or fast-forwarding because “it’s all just too COMPLICATED.”  I was glad that I could give her VHS tapes of old movies though, she seemed to like getting those as gifts.

She had this old rotary dial phone that the ringer was going out on, but she never let me replace it for her.  It had some kind of sentimental attachment I guess, though I never could figure out what it was - but when this phone would ring it would go..

“BBBBRRRrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiinnnnngggggggggrrrrRRRRrrrrriiiiiinnGG!”

..and it was the single MOST ANNOYING THING I’D EVER HEARD — it was as if someone had recorded the sound of a phone ringing to a reel-to-reel tape machine, and then smeared peanut butter all over it while playing it back.  It was ghastly, but she’d never let me get her a better phone.  One with pushbuttons would have been nice, but she said she was so used to dialing over the years, that pushing buttons just didn’t seem right.

I once tried to give her my old answering machine.  Coffeesister and I had been married for a couple of years, and had upgraded to a new-fangled voice mail system offered by the phone company, where we actually recorded a greeting RIGHT INTO OUR PHONE and they stored it somewhere in the back room and played it for people if we didn’t answer within so many rings.  It was pretty spectacular!  So, I had this perfectly fine little answering machine that used little cassette tapes to record your message on and then to record the incoming messages when you didn’t answer within so many rings, and I even hooked it up for her, but she was not impressed.  “Way too complicated,” she said, so I had to give it to someone else.

MOM (blonde), with her old pal,
IONA VOLKMAN, sporting the latest
in handmade quilted ladies tops,
circa 1974 or thereabouts

I don’t think mom would feel very comfortable in today’s world.  People are lining up in droves for this little fruit phone, and I just read a post that’s even a couple of days old now, where the fruit company hit the one million mark in sales — it’s probably almost two million by now.  A guy at work bought one and, as he was showing it to me, a strange sound emanated from it; he excused himself, pushed a button, and then said “Hello?”  When he was done I asked him what THAT was all about. “Oh, it was just a friend calling me.” — WHOA!  You can take incoming calls on it too?  Splendiferous!

I think I’m a lot like my mom in a lot of ways, being only ten years younger now than she was when she passed on.  She’d not grasp anything I use today, but I’m far behind the trends, just as she was for her time, and I’m quite comfortable being here.  Coffeesister and I use a couple of little Virgin mobile phones, that we prepay.  We don’t internet with them, although they seem to have that capability and every once in a while I hit the wrong button and flashy graphics say, “LOADING BROWSER!” so I have to wait until it’s done and then hit the button to unload the browser.  Coffeesister does text with people on hers, but I don’t on mine because it’s — are you ready for this? — TOO COMPLICATED, and the letters are too small.  I can’t read them that well.  I do have a camera on mine though, and I’ve taken a few pictures but they look kind of like a chimpanzee took them after licking the lens first.

I mentioned my friend Cali Lewis and as much as I LOVE her podcast on GeekbriefTV, I don’t know what she’s talking about over half the time.  She’ll talk about something called a “drobo” and how it’s “network friendly” and now up to “3000 GIGS!” and you can get one for only $200.00, and all along I’m thinking how much I’d rather just spend $200.00 on something I understand, like a new office chair, although even THOSE are getting complicated these days as they put computer chips in them so that they remember all the ways you like to sit.

Right now, I must say, that with all this new gadgetry being flung at us, I’m happy with my little cell phone that I make a call on once every few days or so, and my Windows XP running on a 4 year old Compaq and my office chair that doesn’t remember a damn thing.. the rest is all just TOO DAMNED COMPLICATED.