Cellular Technology and The Little House on the Prairie

Are you ready for this one?

This week I finally got a smartphone - but not in the traditional sense.  I did not purchase one through my own self-aware willpower.  One of my best friends said "Look, honey, you need to enter the 21st century.  Here - I'll SEND you a spare new Blackberry that I have."

(By the way, you know you have a "keeper" in the friend department when they are generous and painfully honest.) 

Are there any others out there like me?

I've had (maybe) five cell phones IN MY LIFE.  And that's counting "the brick" I had in the 1990's when cellular devices first appeared - the Zack-Morris-from-Saved-by-the-Bell phone that was the size of one of our modern-day cordless landline phones.    No wait, it was bigger than that. 

New gadgets and electronics don't wow me. Part of that is because I am a woman.  The other (larger) part is because, deep down, I am really just Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Farm girl, simple girl.  I'd probably do really well in a covered wagon heading to the Dakotas with provisions for a long winter. That is, until the coyotes show up and the lip gloss runs out. 

Now, before you write me off, I do (obviously) blog.  And I tweet.  So I'm not a total head case, kiddos.  It's just a matter of priorities.

I tend to like old things, too.  You know the old samurai warriors who get mercilessly gunned down by the "new guns" in The Last Samurai?  Yes, I cried streaming tears.  The old being replaced by the new.  I don't like it. 

Some things are better left unchanged.  Take the movie Gone with the Wind, for instance.  No one has remade this cinematic masterpiece into a hipper, terser, cleaner, smaller version.   A version that speaks to "today's generation," a version with more "apps."  Puh-leeze.

Take my old little flip-phone.  OK, maybe I'll concede on that one.   Typing a text message on its non-Qwerty keyboard took ten minutes. 

Now that I think about it, Laura Ingalls Wilder might have enjoyed the Blackberry. She could have de-friended Nellie Olsen on Facebook right from the comfort of her own phone.