Can you hear me now?

While waiting to check out at a store, the clerk asked the women in front of me for an ID. The women whipped out her iPhone and showed a picture of her driver’s license on the phone. This baffled me! Really, was the license just too heavy to carry or what if someone steals your phone?

My earliest memory of a phone was a rotary dial which hung on our kitchen wall. There was a stool nearby to sit for a chat. The other phone in our home was located in the hallway near the bedrooms. Oh what fun to eavesdrop on an older sister’s phone conversation as they did their best to tell teenage secrets in this public area. My grandparents had a party line phone. When their “ring” rang, it was a race to answer the call! If you talked too long, a neighbor on the party line would pick their phone and let you know it was time to say good bye. Still remember getting a princess style phone in my room when I was a senior in high school. Life was good, no more kitchen or hallway phone conversations for me.

 Fast forward to the first phones in cars and those huge handheld cell phones, if you had one you were COOL! The phones of today are a vast improvement in technology and they do so much 

more than make and receive calls. I retired my Blackberry for a smarter phone recently. Miss my crackberry because we understood each. This new phone is really much smarter than I am and reminds me often. With some help from the younger generation I have figured out how to make calls, send text & emails, download music and take pictures. Even mastered to be a good “Angry Bird” and not know many “Words with Friends!" I can make my phone be a flashlight, thermometer and scan product bar-codes. There are many other things my smart phone can do; I just don’t have a clue!

Guess Verizon should change their catch phrase from “can you hear me now” because making calls on a phone is so yesterday!