Text Schmext

In the late eighties, my dad was buying and selling watches in Manhattan. This constant buying and selling kept him moving on the city streets. If there was a watch to buy, he pounded the pavement, north to south to add it to his inventory. To reach my dad during his daily hustle, my sister Jessica and I had to beep him. Once he received the page, he located a pay phone, several quarters and spoke with us until either he ran out of quarters or we said goodbye. Often, we had to wait a half hour to hear from him - locating quarters and an available pay phone took time. This was normal to me and everyone else.

NYC pre-cell phone invasion

Fast forward twenty years. The response time to a digital inquiry must be faster than the speed of light. This is not normal to me, but is apparently normal to most. With the elimination of pay phones (my youngest has never laid eyes on one) and the incorporation of emailing, texting, home phones, cell phones, blackberries, GPS devices, pinging, ponging, instant messaging, facebooking, skyping, ichatting, facetiming, tweeting, twonking, bleeping and eventually blonking, I am supposed to be available every minute of every day. An unanswered electronic inquiry is considered an egregious wireless crime, punishable by brutal barbs and digital hostility from the ones you love. Hallmarkish - I think not.

This transparent and instant availability extends to showering, shitting, sleeping and sexing. Many people I know sleep with their cell phones figuratively tucked into bed with them. Last I checked, sex or a snuggle with a wireless device is overrated. My all-time favorite is sitting next to a couple at dinner, both, whom are staring at their cell phones and texting into the airy universe instead of talking with one another. Todd particularly loves the "loud" talker who screams his cellular conversation over the din of the LIRR, instead of dropping a call into his voicemail. It's so irritating to him that he'd rather sit next to the LIRR "nail clipper."

The younger generation will be addicted to all this electronica and held to immediate response time regulations. We start them early on their daily vitamins and smart phone user sessions. Want to calm down a screaming toddler? Give him your iPhone. A puzzle or stuffed animal is no longer an effective diversion. Smart phones are now ceremoniously gifted with pride to most fifth graders. Host your tweens' get together and these days you'll find 15 kids sitting together, listening to music with headphones and texting. Watch any kid over the age of 11 out to dinner with his / her family, phone on table, spend half the meal typing away.

I am admittedly a horrible and purposefully poor texter and emailer. I carry my phone with me as a means of necessary communication, period. Yes I return my  texts, but usually in the fashion of the late 80s beeper mentality. Often this works against me and that's okay with me. The initial text reads something like:

Texter: Hey, how was your day? 6:09 pm.
Texter: All ok? Haven't heard back from u 6:11 pm.
Texter: Getting worried, where r u. 6:17 pm.
Texter: R u ignoring me? not cool 6:25 pm.

Me: Hey, I'm fine. I was at a Bris 7:30 pm.

Where God forbid my cell phone rang or marimba'd or buzzed. Poor baby boy would have been castrated instead of circumcised.

I do not sit in judgment of anyone who embraces open and immediate availability  - you say tomato, I say tomaaato. Inversely, please do not hate me because I don't. In 1775, Paul Revere had to ride his horse through Medford, Lexington and Concord to warn the patriots that the British were coming by sea. Paul had a critical mission for our almost Nation. He had to spread the alarm through all of Middlesex County. Do you think he needed a smart phone -- neither did the government. They gave him a horse...