Call me anytime!

I think it was about 1976; I was still a DJ at the time and I was rooting through the engineer's office to look for something to read while waiting to go on. I found a Popular Science or Popular Mechanix or Popular Ventriloquism - one of those popular magazines or the other - and there was inside a little blurb about how, many years in the future, you would be able to "take your phone with you wherever you go!" I am a limited visionary, meaning that I can only see about five minutes into the future, and even at that, it had better be brightly lighted. So all I could picture was lugging around the kitchen wall phone, cords and all, and I thought, my heavens, how impractical!



Twenty years later we got our first cell phone and it was such a cute little bugger, no bigger than the average brick, and as heavy. At least we missed that early 90's generation of cells where the battery pack was so heavy, the whole thing had to be carried around in a canvas sack, which reminded me of all those post-WW I Weimar Republic Germans having to carry around their paper money in straw baskets, because it took more than the average wallet could hold just to buy a sauerbraten und bier special at McDusseldorf's.



That first cell sort of looked like a TransFormer; both ends flipped out. And while I'm on this phone thing, have you seen any early 90's sitcoms lately? People walking around their apartments while their nutty neighbor comes skidding through the door and their highly attractive female friend can't find love even in all the wrong places? And the first good cordless phones - again, the size of a Weejun, with a two-foot antenna to carry the precious signal three feet back to the base.



So tonight, it was time for us to get new cells, and what would the author of that long-ago article have to say had he seen the dizzying array of phones and options available? Not enough to make and receive phone calls while you're ahead of me in line at the supermarket, no! Text messages! Instant messages! Still photos! Video images! Email and "internets" access! GPS direction finders! QWERTY keyboards! And all in a little tiny package, not much bigger than a pack of TicTacs!




We are so glad that the same kind lady, Joyce at Verizon, has been our guide through the maze of cell options for many years. Without her, I'd still be walking around with a pocket full of quarters, looking for a pay phone. How old does THAT sound?