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Lee's Summit, MO —
I am at a total loss. I am the dog hearing the high pitched noise. I am the 5-year-old not understanding the gush of words exploding from her father’s mouth when he discovered she put glue on the CDs. I am completely discombobulated.
How can there possibly be a brouhaha brewing over the proposed law banning texting while driving for all ages?
“Oh, it could lead to profiling,” cries one. Profiling who, I ask? Oh, I know, the guy four cars in front of you who has swerved so much you would swear under oath that he would blow a 5.4 on the breathalyzer. Profile away, police force!
I have a very clever car and a very clever phone in that they’ve decided getting together is a fine thing, and so I can make a call from my steering wheel and speak generally in the vicinity of the rear view mirror. I have five numbers programmed into the radio system, so I know I can get hold of my nearest and dearest – or work – at the push of a button. I know anyone can call me, and I can have them with me in the car with the push of another button.
My phone nestles somewhere in the bottom of my bottomless handbag, and lets me know I have an email. I’ve programmed it so that straight out of Monty Python, I am alerted by a voice in top British Army fashion: “Message for you, Sir.” I don’t indeed look to see who has messaged me, or what the email might say because I figure if it’s really important, the messenger would call me.
Having installed the latest and greatest in bundled TV, phone and cable at the house, if the phone rings one look at its screen will tell me who is calling, and I can choose, and often do, to totally ignore it. Usually the screen reads something like “unknown caller,” but I would really like it to say that it’s a “political candidate interrupting your dinner” of late, as we seem to be inundated on a daily basis with these nuisance calls.
If we have the TV on and the phone rings, we don’t even need to look at the phone. The message pops up top right on the screen, and we can elect to pick up or ignore. Ah the wonders of modern technology – my parents would be positively agog.
I am at a total loss. I am the dog hearing the high pitched noise. I am the 5-year-old not understanding the gush of words exploding from her father’s mouth when he discovered she put glue on the CDs. I am completely discombobulated.
How can there possibly be a brouhaha brewing over the proposed law banning texting while driving for all ages?
“Oh, it could lead to profiling,” cries one. Profiling who, I ask? Oh, I know, the guy four cars in front of you who has swerved so much you would swear under oath that he would blow a 5.4 on the breathalyzer. Profile away, police force!
I have a very clever car and a very clever phone in that they’ve decided getting together is a fine thing, and so I can make a call from my steering wheel and speak generally in the vicinity of the rear view mirror. I have five numbers programmed into the radio system, so I know I can get hold of my nearest and dearest – or work – at the push of a button. I know anyone can call me, and I can have them with me in the car with the push of another button.
My phone nestles somewhere in the bottom of my bottomless handbag, and lets me know I have an email. I’ve programmed it so that straight out of Monty Python, I am alerted by a voice in top British Army fashion: “Message for you, Sir.” I don’t indeed look to see who has messaged me, or what the email might say because I figure if it’s really important, the messenger would call me.
Having installed the latest and greatest in bundled TV, phone and cable at the house, if the phone rings one look at its screen will tell me who is calling, and I can choose, and often do, to totally ignore it. Usually the screen reads something like “unknown caller,” but I would really like it to say that it’s a “political candidate interrupting your dinner” of late, as we seem to be inundated on a daily basis with these nuisance calls.
If we have the TV on and the phone rings, we don’t even need to look at the phone. The message pops up top right on the screen, and we can elect to pick up or ignore. Ah the wonders of modern technology – my parents would be positively agog.
I am lucky enough to have a laptop computer at work that I can bring home, so usually I am connected at the fingertip to it approximately 14 hours a day – the greatest portion of it being, of course, for work.
I don’t own an MP3 player or iPod, as I am connected to an Internet radio station when I’m on the computer, and if that’s not on, the TV usually is.
In my spare time, my phone lets me play Scrabble. I currently have four games going with my darling daughter, Madam; one with my oldest friend, ES, in Beijing, or wherever he might be in the world at any given minute, such a traveler is he; and one with a dear friend of mine who has two of the cutest sports crazy kids in the world and is a devoted Jayhawker. So it’s usually only an exchange of one or two words a day, but it’s quite fun.
When I’m not listening to my books in the car, I can turn to my Kindle and read to my heart’s content, only needing a recharge about once every two or three weeks. I can download books directly through my Kindle, or from my computer.
I do a good portion of my shopping online, I can look up any topic I want and get a million explanations, I can find out the exchange rate for the U.S. dollar vs. the East Outer Lothian Krupnik, and I can translate anything I want from English into any other language on earth with a very minor expending of energy.
I’m about as wired as a person can get.
But there is one thing I will never do. You can take it to the grave, and you won’t catch me out. You will never catch me texting while I drive.
Although my phone is incredibly intelligent, I can fat-finger a message in a heartbeat, and while I might start out to say “be home soon,” it could easily come out as “we chrome moon,” as the phone likes to think it is smarter than me and will insert words it thinks I’m trying to type. And that’s when I’m actually concentrating and looking at the keyboard tucked handily in the back of the device. God help me if I tried to do it with one eye on the road and one on the phone.
I will however, confess now. I have a very dark secret.
Do you know what I really like to do? I like to turn my phone off on my drive to and from the office. I like to think I can have a half hour each way just enjoying the drive while I listen to my latest book. I even enjoy a good traffic jam on the way, as it lets me stay in the company of my favorite protagonist and hated villain.
Imagine that? Turning a phone off? Well, I never.
