The name is James. But they call me “Flip Phone Jimmy.”
Oh, I came close to caving a year or so back. I bought myself a smart phone and sat out in the backyard determined to figure out how to use the damned thing. My neighbor and fellow geezer David wandered by and saw me sitting in the sunshine, head tilted toward the screen, fingers cluelessly pecking away. He and I play cribbage and go to the dump every Saturday morning, and his smart phone comes in handy when we cannot remember Jimmy Foxx’s lifetime batting average or where the local tag sales are. He is never without it.
“You didn’t,” he shuddered.
“My wife insisted.”
“Now you’re one of them,” he intoned rather ominously.
Then it hit me: I had buckled. I did not want to be one of them, or spend the time it takes to be one of them: the big chunk of the universe that chats, texts, videos, Venmos, posts, pings, WhatsApps, scans, steams, instagrams, GPSes, emails—and takes pictures to boot. I had been perfectly content to be a remnant of the second Truman administration with a flip phone, plus a digital camera and road maps. And to be insistent that the word “text” is a noun, not a verb.
Hence, I made history at Great Barrington’s AT&T store: its first customer ever to upgrade from flip phone to smart phone, then return and downgrade back to flip phone the next day. And today I remain a curiosity to my friends and to the students I substitute teach.
“Oh, I wish I still had a flip phone,” the adults gush patronizingly.
The kids merely gawk and smirk, or vice versa.
Local school committees recently outlawed smart phone use in schools. But before that, it was digital anarchy: kids texting each other and filming each other—and their teacher—on the sly. With wide eyes, they would claim that they were using their phones as calculators, or to text their mothers, or, in one case, to write a college essay.
And grown-ups are even worse. Oblivious to what is happening all around them, they walk a dog, push a pram, drive a car, and—I swear to you I have seen this more than once—stand at the urinal while on their phones.
Turn on C-SPAN and what do you see behind a legislator delivering impassioned oratory? An assistant staring at a cell phone. Or watch the coveted seats right behind home plate during a Red Sox game and I guarantee you some schmoe will be texting instead of concentrating on the action. William Wordsworth had it right over three centuries ago when he warned that the world is too much with us. Wake up and smell the daffodils, people!
I know my days are numbered. Apple, Samsung, et al. will soon make it impossible to exist without having their product in my pocket. But, in the meantime, I am happy to remain on my demi-digital atoll: earbud-less, app-less, and still flipping.
