oddly enough, i think i will.
written around the time of eight-forty-eight pee dot em dot december nineteenth two-thousand-and-four.
she told me i need to disconnect once in awhile.
funny how tmobile’s data network has been down since. oddly, i haven’t missed it much. yet.
…
waiting for the muni, the old man remarks “are you accessing the muni site on there?” as i am putting away my sidekick.
“no, i actually haven’t tried, let me see if i can.”
“oh, so were you sending messages to a person in europe or something?” he says half jokingly.
“well, a girl down the street at the coffee shop and a guy in australia… yep, it works! (referring to the muni site).
i show him the screen.
“amazing.”
“yeah, it’s pretty cool. this thing actually has a keyboard too, so it’s pretty fast.”
“oh, is it qwerty?”
“yeah, you type with your thumbs.”
i show him the keyboard.
“i have piano thumbs, so it’d probably be too small for me. see, an old fogey like me… i’m just getting into all of this now, so i am still amazed when i see stuff like this. it really shows when i start talking about the 50’s and 60’s. i used to have this old “wire recorder”:http://www.videointerchange.com/wire_recorder1.htm when tapes were still being developed and weren’t strong enough to be used for it.”
i glance at the scrolling red led sign, and note that “time until next muni” reads zero. i look to my left and there it is, smoothly gliding down the street on its worn metal tracks.
and as we board:
“thanks for the demonstration, have a good evening!”