Flip Phone

“Laura Stewart's eyes fluttered open to see Charlie Adams' hand hanging limply from the side of the examination table. She was still huddled on the floor, one arm gripping the pipes below the sink as if they were a life preserver. For a second, she had no idea where she was or how she had gotten there. She looked at the hand with confusion. His index finger was extended, reminding her of that painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was at this moment, with Charlie's finger pointed delicately toward the tiled floor, that Laura remembered George Rayburn. He had disappeared, sucked into the mini-universe that had unfolded across Charlie's body.”

                        --From my novel, “The Secret of the Sky”

 

I own an old Razor3 flip phone. It’s about seven years old, has the original battery and refuses to die. I have a love/hate relationship with cellphones. My wife insists I have one. I drive down a lot of isolated country roads on the way to work and back. I also have some physical problems that make it necessary that I have one with me at all times. But other than that, I hate the suckers. A couple of years ago I thought I had lost it. My first emotion was one of relief, but then I found it the bottom of my backpack. Bummer.

Why would I feel this way about cellphones and electronics in general? I mean my writing obsession depends upon a computer and the Internet access. I’m using my computer now to write this spectacular piece of prose. Yet a part of me hates it.

I like to say I’m an analog guy in a digital world. Chevrolet says I should have something called a tablet. Oh, they love tablets, that General Motors. They harp on it continually in their training videos. They assume that all the Chevy salesmen out there want one or already have one. It’s one of the conceits that show how out of touch they are with the guys on the front line selling their iron.

 

But that’s another story.

This whole thing with Smart Phones bugs the crap out of me. I cringe when I see one. I was at the doctor’s office the other day. There were twelve people sitting in the waiting room, and seven of them were staring at their phones. Six of them were women. Can someone tell me what they hell are they looking at?

I suspect that my old Razor has lasted so because I don’t use it much. At one time I had 4000 unused minutes in my ATT&T account. I don’t like talking on the phone. I have a nephew that will confirm that. The battery always goes dead on me because I forget to charge it. It usually gives up the ghost when I’m driving down one of those country roads I mentioned earlier.

I miss party lines. (Look it up.)

This brings me back to my writing. Without a computer and a little help from Microsoft Word 2010, I would still be dreaming of red ’57 T-Birds stuffed in the corner of my backyard on Lark Street. The magic of a keyboard opened something up in me I didn’t know I had. To be honest, it gave me a reason to struggle on when times were at their roughest. It’s doing the same thing for me now. I am eternally grateful.

But I refuse to ever consider a Smart Phone. I don’t want to check my email, go on Facebook, surf the net and whatever the hell there else there is to do while waiting to see the doctor. That’s why God invented books and magazines. My good friend Scott McDonald bought me a Kindle, and I’ve never used it. Here I am hawking to anyone that will listen to buy my books, but I don’t participate in the process at all. As I said, I’m an analog guy in a digital world.

There’s something sick about that, isn’t there?

Keep Reading

There is more than meets they eye at the 4Corners Cafe. I encourage you, dare you to read my older posts. You may find something interesting there. Maybe even a story of sorts--or is it real? I have recently rearranged them in ascending order. Try it, if you dare.

David

God, the Universe and a '57 T-Bird

“Liz knelt and carefully picked it up. It was heavier than she expected. The edge of the glass had a delicate bevel that highlighted both the wood and the mirror itself.  She looked at her reflection and an older woman stared back. Not old, just older. Her youthful face, the face she had known for all these years, the one that carried the horror of pimples as a teenager and later beguiled Burt Smith was gone. In its place was another face, a face still pretty but one caught in the apex between youth and middle age. Fine creases were starting to appear on her forehead and around the corners of her mouth that no amount of Oil of Olay could banish for long.”

 From the story, Mirror, Mirror, from my upcoming story anthology “unexpected pleasures”.

  

As it happens my first experience with storytelling coincided with the discovery that the Universe was not what it seemed. I was eight, the youngest member of a loving but insulated Portuguese family from Hawaii living on the “Mainland” as it was called, a place so very far from home.

My uncle, Jim Teves, had a bright red 1957 Thunderbird. He was single then, and the world was his oyster, as they say. He’d come over to our house on Lark Street to visit us and park the beauty at the curb. The T-Bird mesmerized me. I remember standing on the sidewalk in front of it thinking it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Every curve and angle was perfect. How could something be so beautiful?

I wanted one.

That’s when I began my campaign for God to give me a miniature version of it. I would lay in my bed at night obsessing about it (and the actress, Sandra Dee, but that’s another story). I concocted a story about it. The government was experimenting with allowing a few select young people to be allowed to drive, and I was perfect for the project. I would have my red T-Bird. I would proudly drive it around the neighborhood, perhaps all the way to Assumption Church, were the pleated-skirt Catholic girls would greet me with love and kisses….

The plan was carefully laid. I instructed God to deliver the T-Bird to a bush at the very back corner of our expansive yard early Saturday morning. That way I’d have the entire day to enjoy it. There, next to creek where we played on lazy summer days, it would be waiting for me. So beautiful. So perfect.  So red.

I awoke that morning and announced to my parents the wonderful thing that was about to occur. I remember them laughing. I thought they might be mocking me, but I suppose now it was one of those “oh, how cute” laughs. Whatever it was, they didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. God was going to fix me up.

I remember bounding out the back door and down the steps. It was one of those wonderful overcast Bay Area mornings; a chill in the air that made you feel so very alive. I ran toward the bush. The T-Bird wasn’t readily visible, but I imagined that God had carefully hit. But as I approached, there was a sinking feeling within me. The space between the bush and the fence was empty. Apparently God had screwed me, and I was devastated.

It was one of those “aha!” moments. A great revelation that I had no control over God, the Universe or anything else. It was at that fateful moment that I realized that life can be cruel, and as the Rolling Stones would later say, “You can’t always get what you want.” 

But I got a story about it; not written down but in my head. And over the weeks and months that followed I would lie in my bed and expand it to my own private underground subway system and a bowling alley that spit out packets of money every time I bowled a perfect game.

So God had given me something: a rich fantasy life that would stay with me throughout my childhood and into my adult years. And then, one day when I was thirty-eighty, I began to write them down.