Walking With Her Daughter by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

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Powell's Books

Last week, I walked into Verizon with my younger son andbought a new phone.  Wait, it's not a new phone.  It's a tiny, itty computer with the notion of phone.  It's a "phone" with more power, 8 times over, than the first computer that I purchased back in the stone ages.  It's a phone that can play music and send things to print and organize my meetings.  I can even talk to it if I want to.

And within an hour, my Blackberry was calling out an SOS.  In a couple of weeks, I'm going to give it to my older son, and then I will be Blackberry-less for real.

Around 2005, I purchased my first Blackberry and I thought my life was forever changed.  As I teach online, I was able to put out brushfires in my classes in the airport or on the beach.  I was able to even blog, for goodness sake, from my phone. 

I learned to type with my thumbs.  I learned to look for the red signal beating out a new message.  It was my friend, my alarm clock, my information conduit.

But the world has moved on from the Blackberry model.  Now I can cram my iPod, my Kindle, my phone into one device.  I can't type very well on it yet, but I'll learn.  I'll adjust.

And one day in a decade or less, I'll get a new device that will do new things.  It's all sort of fun technological miracle and wonder.  A sea of new, though the one thing that no phone seems to do any better than it did was make a call.

Can you hear me now?

Jessica