Tech Time

I spent the better part of two hours a couple of weeks ago waiting for my wife’s delayed flight to come in to LAX. At least I think it was two hours. Few builders of public spaces seem to bother installing clocks on the walls these days. And like a majority of people, I stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago. Who needs one? Every cell phone I’ve owned as far back as I can remember has been able to give me the precise time whenever I need it. It’s just one of the amazing benefits of ever-improving wireless technology – when I can find the clock/time function, that is.

Let me explain. Last month, it was time for our entire family to upgrade our wireless phones to newer models (which not surprisingly always seems to “upgrade” our monthly bill, too).

And therein lies the problem. Because, every time I get a new phone, the learning curve to make a simple call seems to get steeper and steeper. Heaven forbid I should want to check emails, send a text, check a voicemail, or any of the 63,452 more advanced things the phone will do. We all know about the dangers of texting and driving. But sheez, I’m not even sure I should breathe and use my phone at the same time – I might suck in a low flying finch while I’m so distracted.  

In my defense, it’s not like I’m some technological mouth-breather or anything. As a once serious musician/songwriter, I could record songs using state-of-the-art, multi-track reel-to-reel tape machines. I wouldn’t bat an eye doing sound-on-sound recordings, ping-ponging tracks and running a wall full of outboard gear including parametric equalizers, or compression and noise reduction hardware. In other words, I’m not afraid of – nor am I in any way a stranger to – the use of bleeding edge technology.

Nevertheless, there I was at the airport, simply trying to figure out how get the #!*%&^! time/clock function visible on my cell phone screen. While currents of arriving travelers ebbed and flowed around me, I sat there on a hard plastic chair in the baggage carousel waiting area, staring at that stupid, mocking screen of my cell phone -- pushing buttons and opening and closing menus and trying to bring up the clock. I was so intently focused for so long I almost didn’t see my wife walking right past me on her way to the baggage carrousel. And she didn’t see me because I was looking down and engrossed in trying to decipher what should have been a straightforward function on my phone.  

The thing is, when making our recent upgrade, I had tried to choose the simplest phone available. Not wanting or needing the latest and greatest 4G touch-screen i-wonder (or its expense!), I looked for a phone that would merely survive the next two years in my presence. My last phone barely functioned after spending 30 minutes in the pocket of my board shorts while soaking in a very hot tub on the good ship Celebrity Millennium bound for Ketchikan, Alaska two years ago.

The replacement phone I chose was even listed in Verizon’s “simple phone” category. Little did I know that its manufacturer also assumed I would regularly be lost in the wilderness and need additional features like a digital compass, emergency lighting, GPS orienteering apps and many other bells, whistles and survival tools – all of which, it turns out – are much easier to find than the stupid clock. Sigh.

However, the same weekend I nearly chucked my phone onto a runway at LAX, my technologically advanced son – he who was born with a sterling silver flash drive in his mouth – was delightfully dumbfounded when we dragged out an old portable record player to hear what some of our old vinyl LPs sounded like after all of these years. With great hesitation, my young wizard of the web and all things digital, put a big round, black vinyl platter on the spindle of the turntable and turned on the power. As the disc turned at 33-1/3 rpm, he lifted the tone arm off the post and … was stumped. He looked at the slowly spinning LP, looked at me, looked back to the record, back at me and said, “You start this needle thingy at the center, right?”

The poor lad. Such blissful naiveté. Dear old dinosaur Dad was, of course, happy to instruct the boy in the old ways, although I must admit the most difficult part was not chuckling under my breath the entire time. Nearly an hour later, my son was still sitting in front of that turntable, listening with newfound appreciation to the scratchy sounds of my youth.

Sometime I’m going to ask him how to find the dang clock on my phone. But not yet. I’m enjoying this too much.

I’ll see you ‘round town. 

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is revised from a column first published in the March 11, 2010 edition of the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper -- www.cvweekly.com.)

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.