Good Apps and Bad Apps

Technology is an amazing and scary thing.

I just read a really good insight that I now can’t find anymore, because I saw it when I was mindlessly scrolling through one of the social media apps, and the act of years of mindlessly scrolling through social media apps has reduced my attention span and retentive memory to that of a hamster.

So, I will paraphrase and apologize in advance to the person responsible for this pearl of wisdom if I get the ages and exact wording wrong. It went something like this:

Any new technology invented before you were born until age 18 is just normal and how the world works. Anything invented from age 19 to 45 is an amazing new life-changing breakthrough. And any new tech inventions from age 45 until your death all go against the natural order of things and will surely contribute to the downfall of our society.

I’m 51, so I think you know where I stand on the new stuff. Actually, I think I do OK for the most part, but I am convinced that ChatGPT is 100% going to be the end of us.

There are plenty of examples of good, useful apps out there, and I still embrace them. And there are maybe just as many examples of apps that never should have been made in the first place and will surely bring on the end of times. Those are all the ones the teenagers use.

One good example of how I am embracing technology in my advanced years is the Sam’s Club Scan & Go app. I just used it again this morning, and it is a game changer. You just use your phone to scan the barcodes of everything that goes into your cart. You can easily change the quantities, so you only have to scan one of the six packs of bacon crumbles you are buying, as a real-life recent example.

As you make your way through the poor man’s Costco, the app keeps a handy running dollar total of your purchases, so you can easily see how much longer you’ll have to work before retirement. But let’s face it – the number is meaningless because you’re buying six bags of bacon crumbles, for goodness sake. You’ll never live long enough to retire.

Once you are done shopping – signified by a very large three-digit number at the top of the screen and no more room in your giant, oversized cart for anything else – you just hit the Checkout button, and head for the door. A nice person near the exit scans a barcode on your app then scans a couple of items in your cart to make sure your large three-digit number shouldn’t be larger, and they wish you a nice rest of your day.

Checkout lines are for chumps.

Scan & Go is an excellent example of a good app.

Do you know what isn’t a good app? The one that a business I have visited in the past just emailed me about.

Right there at the top of my inbox the other day was the subject line, “Donate Using Our App and You Could Win Big!”

My first thought: Umm… say what? This is a very bad idea.

Why, you ask? The company encouraging me to donate using their app was Vitalant. (Formerly, BloodSource).

I am by no means an expert, but donating blood is really a situation where I think you need hands-on professionals involved in a controlled setting.

Donating with an app seems insanely problematic.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

We Have an Alarming Problem

We have an alarm clock problem. The main problem is I still like my alarm clock. I don’t want to have my phone plugged in and charging right next to my head all night. I want it in another room where it can’t bother me. I purposely don’t call or text people in the middle of the night, and I don’t want to know if they call or text me.

Also, when I want to know what time it is in the middle of the night, I just want to roll over and look. I don’t want to have to pick anything up and make it shine in my face.

Also, one of my favorite things in the world is waking up and thinking my alarm is about to go off, then rolling over to look at the time, only to gleefully discover that it’s still the middle of the night and I get to sleep for four more hours. That moment of joy somehow wouldn’t be the same if I had to extend my arm out from under the cozy covers and pick up my phone.

None of this would be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that my current alarm clock is failing. It’s failing in a really weird way, though. It still tells the time perfectly well, and it has never failed to wake me when I’ve asked it to. The problem is it wakes me - or more to the point, it wakes my wife - when I haven’t asked it to.

In addition to my alarm schedule, it seems to have one of its own.

It has a switch to turn the alarm on and off. In the “on” setting you can choose between a beep, or the radio. The switch even has an indicator light on the display, confirming your desire to have an alarm or not. The clock doesn’t seem too concerned about the status of that switch anymore.

As an example, this past Sunday was a sleep-in morning, so I had chosen “no alarm” with the now, apparently, meaningless switch. The clock had other plans, and fired up a Spanish radio show at 5:30 am, but then kindly shut itself off almost immediately. It’s often considerate like that.

It fired up a second unasked-for and unappreciated alarm at 6:00 am, and that time I had to shut the beeping off myself.

At least my rogue alarm clock tries to keep it fun, though. In addition to random Hispanic talk shows, it occasionally decides to do a completely different alarm noise. Instead of the standard beep, beep, beep sound, it does some funky electronic celebration song, like those ancient hand-held video games made when you scored a touchdown.

That’s not an advertised feature of the clock, and there does not seem to be any switch or setting where I could choose the Mattel football fight song. It just happens every once in a while in place of the regular beep, as if to say, “Hey, it’s time to wake up, champ. Go out there and be your best self. Score a metaphorical touchdown today, winner!”

Here’s the thing: none of this bothers me enough yet to get rid of it. I think the weird celebration song is fun, and I have been blessed with the ability to fall right back to sleep if it’s not time to get up. My wife, however, was not blessed with that ability.

She does not like my alarm clock. At all.

I tried to replace it. I really did! No one makes good alarm clocks anymore. The display on mine is green, and it’s just the right amount of non-intrusive brightness. I tried one with red numbers and one with white, and they both lit up the room like a desk lamp. I think the red one was actually giving us a tan.

I would steal my wife’s alarm clock on her side of the bed, because she uses her phone now like the rest of the world, but her clock absolutely sucks at being a clock. It gains at least a minute about every two days. Left unchecked, I would be getting up an hour earlier than I wanted to within a month.

My wife has made countless pleas for me to get rid of it, along with more than a few threats on my life immediately after unscheduled alarm incidents. I’m going to have to give in sooner or later, for the sake of my marriage and health, but I think the clock just bought me a little more time, so to speak.

Our power was out overnight a few days ago, so I was forced to have my phone by my bed. My alarm clock was completely off. No display, no nothing. But wouldn’t you know it, at exactly 5:30 am, that bad boy sounded a steady beep, beep ,beep to wake me up.

No lights, no display, no power anywhere in the house, but by God, that wasn’t going to stop it from doing its job.

It may be crazy, random, broken, and possibly possessed, but it’s still strangely and incredibly reliable. How can you abandon a trusted friend like that?

I mean, I really wanted to get up at 6:00, but still…

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

How Old Am I, Anyway?

The other day I went to the bank to withdraw all of our money, because my wife and I are getting ready for graduation season. We have a senior graduating from high school, and he has friends graduating, and we also have a lot of family friends with graduating seniors, so basically, we’re giving away our money like it’s free advice.

While I wasn’t exactly excited about being broke, at least the bank was rockin’. I parked in the shade, grabbed my phone from the center console, and walked across the parking lot.  As I got up to the building, I could hear faint music playing from their outdoor speakers. As I entered the bank, the music got a little louder and clearer and I recognized the song as “Volcano Girls” by Veruca Salt.

They’re a ‘90s alt-rock band that I like, and I was immediately impressed by my bank’s music choices. I said hello to the info desk greeter girl, and she responded with a quirky smile. There was no one in line, so I was immediately waved over by a teller on the end of the row, at the low station that has a chair.

I happily plopped down in the chair and told the young lady behind the bulletproof glass that I wholeheartedly approved of their soundtrack. She smiled and laughed.

I said, “Veruca Salt. Good stuff.”

She laughed again and said, “Veruca Salt was the name of the girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

“Yep,” I said, “That’s where this band got their name. Anyway, well done.”

She gave me the second quirky smile I had received since walking into the bank, before she asked me what she could help me with. We were about halfway through withdrawing all of our money in various specific graduation gift denominations when I noticed my phone was getting hot against my thigh in my pocket.

I reached down and placed my hand on it and immediately felt it vibrating. Actually, more like pulsating. When I did, the cool bank soundtrack got a little muffled.

About a millisecond later I had come to the full and rather horrifying realization that I was the one providing the cool bank soundtrack. It was my phone playing “Volcano Girls” from my pants pocket.

“Oh my God, it’s my phone playing the music!” I said to the teller as I frantically yanked my phone from my pocket.

“Yes,” she laughed. “I thought you knew that.”

“No, I did not,” I confessed in the deafening silence of the stoic and professional bank setting after I had managed to stab the pause button on my fully lit Amazon Music screen. “I totally thought that was coming from the bank.”

I did not bother to ask her why she thought I would be OK with knowingly walking into dead silent banks and libraries and such, blaring ‘90s alt-rock from my pants. I was too busy being amazed/embarrassed/dismayed at the fact that I’m all of a sudden the deaf old guy who doesn’t know it’s his phone making all the racket.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I guess I have to get to an early bird dinner special and be in bed by eight o’clock.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

A Brief History of Communications

Many, many years ago, people used to scribble messages and stories on the walls of their caves. That was great, but you had to go to their cave to see what they had to say. That was inconvenient and dangerous, because without advanced notice of the visit, they were likely to kill you when you entered their cave, and there was no way to give advanced notice, because you couldn’t send your own cave wall over ahead of time.

People eventually started scribbling notes on rocks and throwing them to other people, but that was also problematic because of the concussions and rotator cuff injuries associated with the longer/larger messages.

Finally, someone got smart and invented paper, followed closely by the invention of the carrier pigeon. But the pigeons were hard to train and only batted about .500 on delivery because none of the streets were named, and also hawks. There was also a poop-on-the-messages issues until someone figured out the messages should ride of the top of the bird instead of underneath, but the poop-on-the-recipient problem remained, so that program was short-lived.

It wasn’t long before Alexander Graham Bell took credit for a lot of work done by an Italian guy and “invented” the telephone, famously uttering the first words ever to travel across phone lines, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to talk to you about your car’s extended warranty.”

Americans instantly fell in love with the telephone, but within hours of the first network being connected it was rendered completely useless by teenage girls clogging up all the lines.

Then along came World War II and all the teenage girls were sent to work in factories, finally freeing up the phone lines. Radio technology had been progressing side-by-side with the telephone, with Nicola Tesla first demonstrating wireless radio message transfer. He then went on to pioneer the self-driving electric car. The radio was later patented by Gugliemo Marconi who had already made a fortune in cheese-covered pasta.

Radio waves were vital during the war, but there was a problem. The crafty Germans had figured out how to jam our radio signals, rendering our entertainment systems, and possibly more importantly, our torpedo guidance systems, useless. Thankfully, Austrian-born actress Hedy Lamarr had escaped her arms-dealer husband and moved to Hollywood ahead of the war. She went on to star in many, many movies that no one has ever seen, and she was quite famous.

In addition to being smokin’ hot, Hedy was also a genius. During the war, she and a music composer friend took it upon themselves to solve the problem of the Nazis being able to jam our torpedo guidance signals. Those crazy kids invented a radio guidance system that used frequency hopping.

“Frequency hopping?” you ask.

Yes, I don’t know what it is either, but apparently it was later the foundation for the Bluetooth and WiFi technology we know and love. Enjoy your digital device lifestyle? You can thank Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr. I am not making that up. We had to wait nearly five decades for something to come out of Hollywood that was even remotely as impressive, which, of course, was the movie Die Hard.

A few years prior to Hans Gruber falling out of Nakatomi Plaza, Al Gore invented the internet, and along with it, email. I first heard about “electronic mail” when I was in college in the early ‘90s, and I thought it sounded like the stupidest thing I’d ever heard of. Why wouldn’t you just call them, I thought. That is why I’m not a multi-millionaire.

Anyway, radio shows and my beloved phone calls enjoyed a long run of popularity until 2002, when Blackberry introduced the first phone that had a keyboard on it. Sure, the keys were far too small to actually use, but the idea was born. Finally, we could send emails from our phones! I mean, sure, you could use the Blackberry and the iPhones that followed as phones, but you could type on them!

The invention of the smartphone was the turning point in a communications timeline that has come full circle. We used to enjoy writing letters. Then we ditched that practice in favor of telephone calls until our telephones were able to write letters. The long letters known as emails gave way to texting as we grew more and more averse to actual phone calls.

Now, no one likes telephone calls anymore and everyone just writes short, incoherent texts to each other with atrocious grammar, zero punctuation, made-up words, a never-ending array of emojis, and no capital letters whatsoever.

We’re all the way back to basically texting each other cave painting scribbles.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why my wife and my children never answer my calls.

I’ll just leave them a quick voicemail…

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Be Best Life - Repost

A commissioner from the FCC is calling for Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores. If you are unfamiliar with TikTok (in other words, if you’re really old), chances are it’s the thing that your grandkids are staring at when they are staring at their phones. Which is all the time. Literally, right now. Look at them right now, and they will be watching a TikTok video.

TikTok is a video app where young people record themselves either dancing or hilariously getting “accidentally” hit with something by their friends, and then trillions and trillions of other young people watch those videos in a trance while drooling and forgetting to do their chores and homework.

The FCC has shown, however, that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese government, is illegally data mining off every phone it’s installed on. TikTok is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but rest assured, your teenager doesn’t care, so Apple and Google will keep offering it.

TikTok may be bad, but I’m here to tell you that not everything coming out of China is nefarious. I mean, the copywriting on Chinese products is bad, but it’s hilarious, and only harmful to the sales of those products. Actually, it has an outside chance of being harmful to you, I guess, if you happen to fall over laughing like I did when I got the SUPERSEALER for Christmas.

The SUPERSEALER is a crappy ninety-nine-cent as-seen-on-TV plastic bag sealer that is really hard to operate and works poorly. I could care less about the bag sealer. I am in love with the little cardboard box it came in.

The WORKWONDER SUPERSEALER is made in China by a Chinese company that obviously has two copywriters. One of these people has some background in using the English language. We’ll call him Bob. The other has to be the owner’s son, and after disappointing performances in many different departments, copywriter was the least harmful position his dad could think of to stick him. We’ll assume the owner’s name is Mr. Wang. Mr. Wang doesn’t know any English either. Bob is obviously terrified of Mr. Wang and won’t tell him that Son of Wang partied continuously for four years at the international university in Beijing and knows no English whatsoever.

In a few places on the box, Bob invites me to Just slide SUPERSEALER across bags to seal in freshness!

Son of Wang tells me, Relaxed onepulls, guarantees quality to retain freshness. Based on what we get from Son of Wang in his main paragraph, I guarantee Bob helped him with the last half of that sentence.

Here’s Bob’s effort on selling us on the amazing benefits of the SUPERSEALER:

Finally an inexpensive and easy way to perfectly reseal unused poutions of food. This amazing new SUPERSealer creates an airtight seal that locks in freshness.

You simply slids SUPERSealer along the edge of any bag and it’s sealed airtight. It’s that easy. You’ll not only save on storage bags, but you can save even more buying bulk at warehouse clubs. Just use your SUPERSealer to reseal any unused portions over and over again!

I never claimed that Bob was great. I just said he has some background in English. He’s not the best speller, but I do have to give him credit for using American sayings like, “locks in freshness,” and “it’s that easy.” That would suggest that he has a better than average grasp on American English than your standard WORKWONDER employee.

Here’s what Son of Wang had to offer us. I swear, I am not making any of this up, and keep in mind, folks, this is written on the SAME BOX as Bob’s paragraph.

Have sometimes been able to affect your state of mindbecause of a lot of situation such as damp , becomingmildewed , depraved , water leaking from in the dailylife, have used you feel very vexed , good under this , have had the convenient plastic bag of new model seal implement , have all have made stable , no matter howvexed your nonutility be. Collection such as all food , clothing and other articales of daily use , postage stamp, you have put plastic bag lining inside as long as with them , seal machine has taken form lightly with convenient adheaive tape of new model as soon as the fault , one have protection against the tide , mould proof, the herm etic sealing bag retaining freshness. Such is simple , the simplicity is comfortable, be best life!

After reading the box about a hundred times (and laughing out loud every single time), I have to assume this conversation took place at the WORKWONDERS office prior to printing the box:

“My dad wants you to proofread my copy, Bob. What do you think?”

“This is the most unintelligible thing anyone has ever written. What the hell, Wang?”

“My dad is the owner. I’ll have you fired.”

“Looks great. Let’s print that box!”

 

I mean, am I a little concerned that Communist China will eventually collapse the world’s digital economy by waging a cyber war against us with our own data? Sure I am, but at least Son of Wang provided my family our new motto:

Be best life!

Postage stamp,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

An Open Letter to Samsung

Dear folks over at Samsung,

I think, as a smartphone owner, I really don’t have a ton of demands or expectations about performance or features.

Your younger smartphone users – let me pause here for a moment and point out that I didn’t call them “owners.” If they had to pay for these damned things, they would have a lot more respect for them!! Anyway… your younger smartphone users expect quite a bit more from you than I do. They are spoiled little brats. I grew up when the only phone available was bolted to the wall in the kitchen.

I’m fifty, so I’m in the age group that missed the original brick phone, bag phone, and car phone. My first cell phone was a flip phone, and even with that kind of crazy-awesome new technology in the palm of my hand, texting was still damned near impossible.

Kids today will never know the pain of texting a word containing an “ss” on a flip phone. Hit the 7 key four times. Wait until the first “s” registers. Hit the 7 key four more times. Wait for the second “s” to register. Congratulations, you typed “ss.” On the other hand, they have never had the sheer, unbridled awesomeness of ending your phone call by flipping the phone closed.

The Blackberry came out shortly after that, and having a full keyboard was a mind-blowing game changer, even if we had to sacrifice the insanely cool end call flip.

So you see, based on my history, anything a current smartphone can do is just simply gravy. I understand the past and the evolution of these things. I get it. I’m easy.

All that being said, I’m writing you today to take serious issue with one feature I recently noted. I think you can agree, that based on what I’ve told you about my age, history, and expectations, if I’m concerned, you should be too.

There I was last Thursday, just minding my own business, working in my office. My Samsung Galaxy S21 was sitting face up on my desk, directly to the right of my computer screen, plugged into the charger. Things were shaping up to be a fairly normal day, right up until the phone woke itself up, opened the camera app, and took a picture of the desk.

Since the phone was sitting directly in my field of view, I watched the entire thing take place, and I can assure you, my hand never even went near the phone. I hadn’t even bumped the charger cord. It just decided to take a picture all by itself.

Now, again, I don’t demand a lot from my smartphone, but autonomous picture taking is not a feature I’m at all interested in. Pictures on my own phone are one thing, but who’s to say that the next one won’t go public? I mean, my phone decided to take a picture all by itself. Why wouldn’t it decide to upload the next one to social media? Why not, right?

I can think of a whole bunch of reasons not to have this feature, but the main one off the top of my head right now is my shower.

When I shower, I prop my phone up on the bathroom counter, facing me, so I can see the clock on the screen. I’m almost positive the last thing this world needs is shower photos of my fifty-year-old butt on Instagram.

We’ve got enough problems out there. Let’s not add to it with unwanted shower selfies.

Kindly look into that issue for me.

For all of us.

For mankind.

With much appreciation for all you do,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

An Open Letter to Life 360

Dear folks over at the Life 360 app,

I am writing you today to ask you to do just a little bit better with your app. Please don’t get me wrong – we love it. As parents, my wife and I just can’t get enough of knowing exactly where our children are at all times. At least, exactly where their phones are.

Your app can cause trouble for people, however.

As an example, one of our police officer friends told us a story about an older gentleman who visited a coffee shop one day, and was seen by one of the employees placing his phone in a Ziploc bag, and tucking it under the outdoor deck. The man then drove off in his car.

The barista was obviously confused and concerned, so he called the police, who came and retrieved the phone, then tracked the man’s car via traffic cameras to a rather shady little strip mall. The strip mall happened to contain a massage parlor of the blacked-out-windows variety, if you know what I mean.

Inside the massage parlor, our friend the cop was able to return the phone to a very, very concerned gentleman wrapped in a cheap towel. A gentleman who not only did not want to be talking to a police officer inside that particular “massage parlor,” but most definitely did not want his phone to be there.

That was a case where your app caused a problem for that older gentleman, and rightfully so. He’s obviously a dirtbag.

My problem is that your app recently caused a problem for me.

No, I was not putting my phone in a Ziploc under a coffee shop’s deck.

You see, Son Number One and Two are in Mexicali, Mexico right now on a mission trip with our church. They are currently working hard, building a house for a deserving family in need of one. We are very proud of them, to say the least.

But their mother and their grandmother tend to worry. They tend to worry a lot. Many times, they will search out things to worry about if life seems to be going too smoothly. So, as you can imagine, two of our three boys going to Mexicali was plenty of fuel for the worry fire.

Your app, however, piled some unnecessary logs onto that fire.

The boys left on Friday, and we followed their progress down south on the Life 360 app as the day progressed. We knew that they would turn their phones off on Saturday morning when they crossed the border. The group leaders hold onto their phones for the week so the kids have no distractions and can focus on why they’re there.

The problem for me here is two-fold.

First is the accuracy of location and the update speed your app provides. Regularly, both of my sons will be riding in the same car to and from school, but it appears on the app as if they are in separate cars and are racing each other, trading the lead back and forth the entire way. That seems like it could work better, but it was always more of an amusing glitch than a problem. Until now. You’ll see why shortly.

The second part of the problem is how your app reacts when the phone gets shut off. For some reason, the app doesn’t just immediately say, “The cell signal has been lost or the phone has been shut off,” or something like that. No, your app holds out hope – for about two days, it turns out – that the user will regain the cell signal or turn the phone back on. While you are holding out hope, that person – my wife’s first- and second-born, in this case – remain frozen on the screen as if they’ve simply stopped and are hanging out there.

In this case, for two days on the Life 360 screen, Son Number Two was being detained at the border crossing and Son Number One was at a hospital a mile inside the border.

A hospital, man!

Do you have any idea what I had to go through to talk my wife and mother-in-law out of storming Mexico to retrieve their babies?

Not cool, Life 360. Not cool.

So, yeah, if you could fix those little bugs, that would be amazing.

Thanks in advance,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Long Live the iPod Shuffle

I don’t like Apple products.

I realize I just made half of the population gasp, but it’s true, ApplePeople. There are actual humans out there that don’t think iPhones are just the best thing ever.

Apple is a cult, like CrossFit or “high-demand religions.” (I’d say you know who you are, but you don’t… yet.) Everything costs four to five times what it should, and doesn’t communicate well with anything other than other Apple products. (Much like high-demand religions, come to think of it.)

Let’s use text messages as a quick iPhone for-instance. Apple decided that having an Apple-only iMessage texting platform was a good idea. It wasn’t. The rest of the free world (using that term literally, cult members) uses the SMS texting platform.

Hey ApplePeople, has an outsider ever told you that they didn’t get your text? They weren’t lying. Your phone never sent it to them. Did you assume it was their fault because they have a stupid Samsung that doesn’t work right? It wasn’t. It was your fault. You can read that as many times as you need to.

Buried in your iMessage settings, six layers deep, is a button that should not even have to be there that says, “Send our ridiculous iMessage text as a real text if the other person doesn’t have an overpriced cult phone.” (It might be worded slightly differently.)

Oh, and don’t worry, you have to do the same thing to your iPad, but it’s more complicated.

And don’t even get me started on Ethan, the twenty-something “customer service Genius,” (currently gagging again at that title) at the Apple store the time I had to go with my mother-in-law. I’ve never met a human that was so smug about not being able to answer a SINGLE technical question I asked him. He was visibly shocked that I wanted to know about anything other than the color of her new computer. (Which she was buying because you stopped supporting her “old” one from two years ago.) I would have slapped Ethan, but I didn’t want to hear him scream.

All that being said, Apple, I will give credit where credit is most definitely due. I own an iPod Shuffle, 2nd Generation, released in September of 2006, and it is an absolutely amazing piece of equipment.

You probably stopped supporting it in October of 2006, but I don’t care, because it is bulletproof. And beautiful. And small.

So very, very small.

It’s smaller than a pack of matches. (Kids, you’ll need to get a size reference from your parents here. Matches are what people used to use to light their vapes, back when vapes were made of paper and you actually lit them on fire on purpose, instead of waiting for the crappy knock-off Chinese battery to light it on fire for you.)

My iPod Shuffle has no pesky screen. It’s a sleek piece of aluminum and white plastic with one set of selector buttons, two switches, and a headphone jack, because it’s old-school and doesn’t screw around with Bluetooth. It clips onto the pocket of my shorts and plays twenty songs in order, or on shuffle. It blares music through my headphones while I run, as loud as I can stand it, and I only have to charge it once every few months.

It is simple, and at the same time, amazing. I can’t speak for any of the other iPod Shuffle generations, but the Gen2 is phenomenal. The battery, the storage, the size and weight, the clip, the simplicity – it’s all perfection.

So, thank you, Apple, for the amazing iPod Shuffle. You help make my runs as enjoyable as runs can be.

Now please fix the damn texting thing. And fire that idiot, Ethan.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Duty-Free Shopping, Perhaps

I want to point out to the wonderful and kind folks over at the California Franchise Tax Board and the amazingly benevolent and totally cool (and not at all “universally disliked”) people at the IRS that the following tale could be completely hypothetical in nature.

Let’s just say, for the sake of telling a fun story, that my family recently traveled via our Chevrolet Suburban up to Oregon, where we have other family. We potentially traveled there to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It was, hypothetically, a great trip!

If Son Number Two had happened to catch wind of a smokin’ deal that Verizon was having where he could somehow trade his current iPhone in as long as the screen wasn’t cracked and magically get the latest iPhone 13 for free, he would have been really excited about that.

The one catch to getting a “free” iPhone here in California with a possible Verizon program would be that you would still have to pay the sales tax on the $900 “value” (using that term ironically, Apple) of the phone. That could, in theory, run you as much as $92 in tax in some parts of the Golden State.

If Number Two happened to hear about this program the night before we left for the alleged trip, he would have been pestering me to take him to a Verizon store the minute we had a free minute. I would have buckled under his teenage endurance for pestering and taken him to a possible Verizon location close to our accommodations on Sunday.

We then might have been informed about the true nature of this hypothetically amazing deal, whereas every one of the family’s lines potentially had an $800 or $900 credit for a brand-new phone, due to our possible customer loyalty.

If that had been the case, we surely would have all arrived at that same Verizon store on Monday, fifteen or so minutes before they opened, ready to upgrade all of our phones for free. And during the ostensibly fictional transaction, we may have discovered that my wife’s phone was ineligible due to a previously unnoticed small crack in the corner of the screen.

Getting some fictional advice from a helpful Verizon employee we’ll call Mike, we would then have tracked down a brand-new older model phone, still in the box, being sold, potentially, four miles away on Facebook Marketplace, and jumped in the car to race over and buy it with cash for far less than the sales tax would have been had this alleged transaction been taking place one state to the south.

And after spending, potentially, three hours of our Monday morning at the Verizon store and/or on Janet’s porch paying cash for a phone her daughter ended up never using, we might have walked out with five top-of-the-line, brand-spankin’-new cell phones for a hypothetical grand total cost of $175 in data transfer fees and cash for Janet’s daughter’s phone she didn’t want.

I would have been very pleased, ostensibly, because what we would have avoided, in theory, was upward of $450 in California sales taxes by having this entire theoretical situation occur on the fertile soil of our friendly neighbors to the north.

And if I had purchased a new wallet-style phone case for my wife on Amazon Prime and had it shipped to our Oregon accommodations, I would have, in theory, also avoided paying any sales tax on that.

Had any of this actually taken place, rest assured that come January, I would be reporting those sales to the IRS and the California Tax Board so that I made darn sure to pay 100% of my fair share of the tax revenue they so richly deserve. But, of course, as stated, this tale is speculative. Merely a “for-instance.”

Later that week I also hypothetically put new sales tax-free tires on the Suburban. They rode, in theory, quite nicely back down south.

Duty-free has a nice relaxing hum to it.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Group Text Hell

“I’ve never been held hostage, but I have been on a group text.”

If you own a smartphone, I’m sure that rings true for you. And if it doesn’t, then I’m terribly sorry that you were held hostage at some point in your life. I hope that’s not still going on!

I, unfortunately, have found the fourth level of group text hell. I am currently on a GroupMe with the seventh- and eighth-grade flag football teams. Not the parents. The actual seventh- and eighth-graders.

Like his brothers before him, Son Number Three won’t get a cell phones until high school, but I’m pretty sure every other kid on both teams has a phone and is on the GroupMe. The coach is young enough that he just set up the GroupMe and added the kids. I’m not even sure he was planning to communicate at all with the parents. For the first week of practice, I had no actual written or verbal proof that my son was even on the team.

I guess the coach is too young to realize that it used to be just the parents on the group communication, because we’re the ones that actually need to know the practice and game schedule.

Now, since all the kids have phones, they’re on, too. Here’s the first reason why that’s dumb: the parents still need to be on, because the last person you can trust to relay information correctly is an eighth-grade boy. My son cannot accurately explain to me a single solitary event of his entire day.

The second reason it’s dumb is that now the coach and whatever parents are unfortunate enough to be on the chat are stuck there with forty middle schoolers.

Allow me to illustrate the situation with a recent text string:

 

Coach: Our game this Thursday the 2nd is an away game. Please arrive at Johnson Middle School by 3:30pm for our 4:00 game time. Remember to wear your red away jersey.

Player 1: cool who are we playing

Player 2: johnson idiot

Player 3: hahaha

Player 4: ok

Player 4: are we home or away?

Player 1: coach said red jersey so were home

Player 2: we are away dude  we are only home when we playat our field idiot

Player 4: So white jersey?

Player 3: white jersey is home coach said red for away

Player 2: ya

Player 5: yep

Player 4: ok what time is the game? i need to find a ride. my mom is working i think

Player 1: the game is at 3:30 idiot you have to read coachs text

Player 2: the game is at 4 idiot we have to be their at 330 you have to learn to read hahahaha

Player 5: cool

Player 6: ok

Player 7: coach I dont want to play center I want to play a catching position I can catch you just have to see me

Player 2: dude you cant catch

Player 7: shut up

Player 4: hahahaha

Player 8: coach am I allowed to play in the game if I haven’t been to practice because I was sick but im not sick anymore?

Player 1: ya you should come. you can play

Player 9: What time is the game? who we playin?

[And on and on for another 24 texts]

Parent who didn’t start at the top of the 48-text string: Hi Coach, can you let us know the location and arrival time for this Thursday’s game, please?

Me on the couch listening to my phone beep like it’s a bomb about to go off: *just shoot me*

 

I’m starting to think it might be less of a headache if I just gave Son Number Three a cell phone and the car keys. Being off this GroupMe would probably be worth it.

I mean, he’s already thirteen. What could go wrong?

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Unpredictable Text

I have a problem with how my phone works. I’m not talking about the part where it somehow makes me pull it out of my pocket every 35 seconds to stare at it. That is a separate problem that we can deal with as soon as we can set our phones down long enough to concentrate on how to solve it.

Today, I’m talking about the predictive text feature. I have a Samsung phone which is more or less completely powered by Google. At this point, Google, I think you own and/or control at least half to three-quarters of the free world, so I’m guessing you have the money to make the predictive text function work slightly better than it does.

Shouldn’t be too hard. I think a third-grader could improve it. One small example happened on my birthday a week or so ago. A friend of mine from high school posted a birthday greeting on my Facebook timeline that read, “Happy Easter.”

I obviously responded with “and Merry Christmas to you.” He liked my response and then told me, “I used predictive text after ‘happy’ and I had just wished someone else a happy birthday.”

Keep in mind, Google, my birthday is in May. Easter is not in May. Ever.

If you’d like an easy place to start that doesn’t involve simple holiday calendar math, how about idioms? Shouldn’t be hard. You could have a big list of all the American idioms, with the program just waiting for those first few key words. You could pull that off in one afternoon with your resources.

Idioms are easy, because they are very unique phrases and each one is always the same. They are so rigorous in their structure that John McClane was able to justifiably shoot a fake German bank guard in Die Hard 3 on the sole grounds of the man saying, “It feels like it’s going to rain dogs and cats later.” It is ALWAYS “cats and dogs.” No exceptions. Case closed. Shoot him. Totally fair.

Here’s what you have to offer with that particular idiom:

I typed: It’s raining

You suggested: (here) (and) (rainy cloud icon)

OK, that’s fine. Not enough information yet. I get it.

But then,

I typed: It’s raining cats

You suggested: (and) (but) (cat icon)

I will give you partial credit for suggesting “and,” but the main middle suggestion was “but.” You think I was going to type, “It’s raining cats, but…” But what? “But I don’t think it’s the end of the world just yet. Wait until it’s raining sheep, then we’ll panic.”??

But now here’s where I know you are not even trying.

I typed: It’s raining cats and

You suggested: (I) (cats) (dogs)

Yes, Google, giving me the middle suggestion of cats here was fantastic. “It’s raining cats and cats.” Nailed it.

I thought I would try one more, just to see if raining cats and cats was an anomaly. I decided to stick with the feline theme and go with “Look what the cat dragged in.”

I typed: Look what the

You suggested: (hell) (heck) (most)

OK, again, not enough info yet.

I typed: Look what the cat

You suggested: (is) (says) (cat icon)

“Look what the cat says.”?? I realize you guys have a basically unlimited amount of money, but if you have secretly developed talking cats, please stop that project immediately. The world does not need that. (But please do talking dogs!!)

The moment of truth…

 I typed: Look what the cat dragged

You suggested: (me) (on) (skull icon)

Yes, Google. “Look what the cat dragged (skull icon)” is exactly what I was not going for.

Complete and total predictive text failure.

Not only could the “predictive” function be better – a LOT better – but it could also be more helpful. For instance, when I am saying “got it” on a text, I will usually type “Roger, Roger,” because I speak in movie quotes, and Airplane! was one of the best movies ever made, obviously. Predictive text has never once suggested the second Roger for me. I’ve only texted that a thousand times.

Predictive text has also never suggested that I stop typing “Roger, Roger,” because I am drastically overplaying it. That would also be helpful.

Predictive text could also be used to prevent communication problems. A simple note to me in the middle of a text that says, “This person does not respond well to sarcasm,” would be helpful in so many situations. I know you store everything we write anyway, Google. Help us! Use that data mining for some good.

Predictive text could suggest more hip slang for me. I’m forty-nine years old, dammit. I stopped trying to stay current a long time ago. (Note my use of the adjective “hip.”)

If I’m texting, “Did you see [insert athlete’s name here] last night? He was on fire,” it would be great if you would suggest “poppin’ off” instead of “on fire.” I don’t know what it means, but my kids would think I was marginally cooler.

And speaking of my kids, any help you could give me in the reverse would be great. Meaning, I would love it if you could use the predictive feature as a translator as well.

As an example, when I text them to be home by nine and they respond with “bet no cap,” it would fantastic if you could quickly show me that that means, “I will. I am telling the truth.”

Help out! You’ve got the money. You’ve got the people. You’ve got the computers. C’mon, Google. We can predict better than this!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

There's a Problem with Facebook

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here today to report on a potentially serious problem I discovered last night. No, not that I’m so old I can hurt myself by sleeping wrong. I already knew about that problem. I’m talking about Facebook. I think it might have a huge glitch.

I got into bed last night, and as usual, said my prayers for an injury-free night of sleep. I was just about to close my eyes when I noticed the blue glow of a computer screen coming from my office down the hall. Realizing I had forgotten to shut my computer down, I hauled myself out of bed and headed down the hall to turn it off.

I got back into bed forty-five minutes later.

When I got to my computer, Facebook was up on the browser. I went to shut the computer off, but Facebook made me name my rock band first by combining the color of my underwear with the last thing I ate. We are the Blue and White Nachos. I was then forced to pick between four different trays of delicious fried food. There was a crawfish and fries tray, a wings and tater tots tray, a garlic bread and mac ’n cheese tray, and a mini burgers and fries tray. It was a very difficult decision that I agonized over for a while, but ultimately I had to go with the wings and tater tots because of my love of the tot.

I was then told that my earlobes were the same distance apart as my nipples, so I had to go check that in the mirror and it was a lie. I went back to shut off the computer but I had to take an ‘80s movie challenge first. The question was simply how many of the twenty movies listed had I seen, but the average score was shown as thirty-nine percent, which was ridiculous. I murdered that score. I had seen all of them except one. I then had to email myself a reminder to finally see Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

I went back to the browser to shut off Facebook but before I could I had to watch a ten-minute animated video on how Pablo Escobar spent his billions of dollars in drug money. That was followed by a Mexican restaurant life hack video where you get a Styrofoam to-go container, but instead of taking your tacos home, you pour your margarita in there and then punch a little straw hole in the top of the lid. I was making a mental note to tell my wife about the margarita trick, and also about how Pablo Escobar had two submarines and his own zoo, but got sidetracked by some kid going absolutely crazy at a Georgia Tech welcome speech, followed by the first seven minutes of Conan O’Brien’s 2011 Dartmouth commencement address.

The rabbit hole had quite a few twists and turns from there, ultimately terminating in a video of a guy cutting a frozen bass out of an iced-over lake with a chainsaw. When he got the chunk of bass-filled ice free and pulled it out, there was a frozen pike underneath with its teeth clamped to the tail end of the bass.

At that point, as I glazed over wondering just how fast that lake actually froze over, my mouse cursor was finally able to reach all the way up to the log out button, and I was finally able to shut my computer down. I’m not even sure how it happened, but I was simply unable to get out of the Facebook program until that point. Due to this programming flaw, whatever it is, I lost almost a full hour of sleep.

I hope you’re not experiencing the same problem with your Facebook account, but being that it’s a web-based program, I suspect you might be. I really think we ought to let someone over there at Facebook HQ know about this so they can look into it.

I think they’ll be genuinely surprised at how much of our time they’re accidentally wasting!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

The Unlimited Life

My family and I were living a cramped, restricted life before we made the change and set ourselves free. No, I’m not talking about boxers vs. briefs. We finally signed up for the unlimited cell plan.

I guess it’s a matter of perspective. I mean, I remember when cell phones hadn’t been invented yet and I used to get a phone bill with long distance charges. That’s right kids, it used to cost more – way more – to call someone in another area code. It was like thirty cents a minute to call someone in another state. And you had to dial a 1 before the number! It was crazy.

And don’t even get me started on calling someone in another country! Not only was there a delay that made it almost necessary to say “over,” as if you were using a CB radio, but it cost three bucks a minute. And keep in mind, those were ‘70s and ‘80s dollars, so that’s equal to seven hundred bucks a minute today. You didn’t call your relatives in England just to shoot the breeze. That’s what letters were for. And don’t even get me started on air mail postal rates…

Anyway, it was a big deal when the fist cell phone plan came out with an unlimited calling option. That was back when we used to use our cell phones as actual phones. Now they are more like internet browsing-enabled video cameras that can send text messages and can also be used to make phone calls in an emergency.

But we used to use them to call people, and it was amazing when we no longer had to dial a 1 and we could just talk for as long as we wanted to someone in Montana. In this case, “as long as we wanted” meant about forty-five seconds until the call was dropped, because cell phone calls didn’t work very well at all. And also, there was no cell reception anywhere in Montana.

Then came texting. Believe it or not kids, when texting first came about, no one used it because you had to hit the same button seventeen times to make a capital “A,” and if you accidentally hit it eighteen times, it became a Greek alpha, an exclamation point, or an apostrophe.

Then along came the Blackberry, that had the entire regular keyboard on the front of it so you could finally text real words. The only problem was the keys were so small that if you were born with human thumbs you were physically unable to hit less than four of the buttons at once, so texting had to wait a little longer.

Finally, the screen became the buttons and we could text! I texted someone for the first time in my thirties and immediately hated it. Why would anyone decide to type out what you wanted to say instead of just calling them? I have unlimited calling minutes, for goodness sake!

But you crazy kids stuck with it and made it mainstream, and now I get frustrated if I need to actually call someone instead of texting them. My unlimited calling minutes mean nothing to me anymore. You can have them. My unlimited texts, however, are gold.

When texting began, we had a plan that had a certain amount of free texts and then ten cents per text if we went over. It worked at first, because no one my age texted each other. Then it got more popular, and pretty soon my wife was using up our free text allotment by the first Tuesday of the month.

Unlimited texts plans became a necessity for us before Son Number One got a phone, but that definitely would have forced the issue. An American teenager can send two thousand texts per hour, just to one other kid from their school that they don’t even really hang out with.

So, we added our first teenager to our cell plan, and entered into the epic battle with the last cell phone bill hurdle – DATA. As the phones got smaller and the technology got better, our data usage began a steady climb. By the time Son Number One got his first phone and thirty seconds later started streaming nine straight hours of YouTube videos, we were up to the largest limited data plan they offered.

We set a data cap for his phone and purchased a Costco-size tub of earplugs to put in every time he reached his data limit and came to us to whine about how unfair life was under our roof. We had to restock the earplugs a few times, but never the data.

Then along came Son Number Two. Limited data was simply no longer an option. I called our carrier and offered to trade them my unlimited call minutes for unlimited data, but they weren’t interested. So, it came time to bite the cellular bullet and go completely unlimited.

I fought it for as long as I could, but once I swallowed the bitter pill of my monthly bill increase, I have not looked back. Going unlimited has been one of the best experiences of my life. I was not expecting, and cannot really explain the feeling of total freedom it gives me.

There were times in the past when someone in the family would accidentally turn off their Wi-Fi for days at a time. I won’t mention any names, but her initials are “My Wife.” I eventually stopped pulling my hair out over how that could happen and just accepted the fact that she used our entire month of mobile data while in our living room. Do I worry about that now? Heck no!

What’s the Wi-Fi password here? Who cares!? We have unlimited data.

Are the boys streaming videos in the car? What do I care? We have unlimited.

Does the Candy Crush game that runs nearly constantly on a road trip connect to the internet to download ads? I have an unlimited plan that says I don’t care anymore!

Is that movie in 3G? 4GLTE? 5G? Who knows and who cares? Hey movie, you take as many G’s, L’s, T’s, and E’s as you need. We have an unlimited amount. Get yourself a BLT while you’re at it.

I’m drunk with power. I have a movie streaming on my phone right now that I’m not even watching. I download things now just because I can.

Our teenagers have turned unlimited data into a competition. They give me regular updates on how much data they have used and argue with each other about who used more and how fast they used it. I am strangely proud of them.

Hmm… You know, come to think of it, while unlimited is amazing, it might not be all that healthy.

Once this initial rush wears off, we might need to think about buying another gross of earplugs and putting limits back on the boys.

And probably on ourselves, too.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Insert Emoji Here

It all started with someone turning their head ninety degrees to the left and realizing that this

 : )

looked like a smiling face. It wasn’t too long before a bunch of clever people started exploring their keyboard options and we had a nose,

:-)

a winking face,

; )

and a surprised look.

: 0

It escalated until eventually no one was getting any actual work done, but we had a shrugging guy,

\_( ``/ )_/

and Princess Leia,

@(^0_0^)@

among many other useful little designs. Then, something weird happened. People started including these little designs in actual sentences, as part of the message.

Instead of writing, “I’m happy about that,” people started just putting a

: )

at the end of the sentence. It wasn’t long before it was universally understood that you meant you were happy, and not all colon space parenthesis about it.

We named them “emoticons,” which literally translated from Latin means, “A huge waste of time.”

“Emoticons” got shortened almost immediately to “emoji,” and things spiraled out of control from there.

Eventually, someone at a cell phone company said, “Why don’t we just make pictures?” and the first round yellow smiley face found its way off the Jeep spare tire cover and onto our cell phones. It has been an exponential emoji curve ever since.

I can now be happy with your text in a number of different teeth options, I can laugh until I cry at your text, I can laugh until I cry with a sideways tilt to my head and sneezing eyes. I can look surprised, worried, pensive, mischievous, shocked, asleep, sick, insane, frustrated, and even dead. There is no end to the emotion I can convey with the array of little yellow faces at my disposal.

And that’s just the little yellow faces. I can also do any one of those emotions in a cat face. And as a monkey.

Apple, the phone company dedicated to making phones for people who do nothing but take pictures of themselves and their food, even came up with a way to make an animated emoji face of yourself. You can even add a body and have yourself standing next to a huge congratulations rainbow with fireworks, conveying the emotion, “congratulations a lot.”

The phone companies didn’t stop there, however. Our emoji menus now contain goldfish, apples, camels, footballs, cacti, the Parthenon, Vespa scooters, trumpets, the handicapped sign, protractors, the flag of Albania, the scales of justice, Ferris wheels, flaming meteors, doughnuts, champagne bottles, beer mugs, and of course, poop.

I use the “thumbs up” all the time, but I recently found my favorite one. Someone at Samsung decided to add an Easter Island head to my emoji arsenal. I have no idea why, or what anyone could possibly try to convey with it, but I use it all the time now, like a signature. “Sincerely, Blockhead.”

These emojis litter our texts, but up until now they have been at the discretion of the texter. That is changing as apps are starting to get pushy about it if you don’t use enough emojis. When I type a note on Venmo about what I’m paying someone for, it keeps popping up emoji suggestions that it wants me to use instead of actual words. If I type “piz…” it’s popping up a pizza slice emoji in front of my fingers, basically screaming at me, “Use this emoji, you idiot! No one reads words anymore!”

And can we even really call the pizza slice an emoji? I mean, I have strong emotions about pizza, but I don’t think a picture of a slice of pizza by itself can be considered a feeling. Be that as it may, I can see where this is all headed.

The English language will die out in its written form, and we will all move back to hieroglyphics, albeit now digital and very colorful. We’re basically all sending each other rebus picture puzzles now instead of sentences.

Your phone has become a digital Lucky Lager beer cap.

[eye] [female sheep] soon,

-[Easter Island head]

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Hands-Free CB

Here in California, our legislators have recently made the roads safer by passing a new law, which always works. We have been required to be “hands-free” with our cell phones in the car since 2008, but now they really mean it. No, really this time.

In 2008, we could still touch our phones while driving, and we could make a phone call while driving, but we weren’t allowed to hold the phone up to our ears. So what that meant was if you were on the phone and held it up to your ear during the conversation, you were breaking the law. But if you were on speaker phone and held a banana up to your ear during the conversation, you were well within your rights as a California motorist.

Also, if you simply held a banana up to your ear while not on the phone, that was OK, too. And presumably, if your phone was turned off and you held it up to your ear while driving, that would have been OK, since at that point your phone is really just an expensive plastic and glass banana, communication-wise.

Since January, however, we are now no longer even allowed to touch our phones in the car. We are still allowed to have a conversation on the phone, but the call has to be initiated without ever touching the phone. We can touch buttons on the steering wheel and dashboard of our space-age cars that will make our phones call someone, but we can’t touch the actual phone itself. It is now required to be duct taped to the roof of the car at all times. There has been no official word on where the bananas need to be.

We are also still allowed to talk directly to the other people in the car, but they will not respond, because they’re all texting each other.

omg. lol.

So here’s my question, oh-so benevolent leaders of this great state: What’s up with CB’s? I saw a trucker the other day just chatting away with someone (presumably another trucker, or possibly a truck stop hooker), holding the CB microphone right there in his hand, which was not even on the wheel of the enormous eighteen-wheeler he was piloting down the freeway. What’s up with that?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but a CB is exactly the same thing as a phone, only with less dropped calls. I realize that you only have to hold the CB microphone up to your mouth, instead of the entire side of your head, as with a phone or a banana, but something tells me lack of peripheral vision is not what you guys are trying to legislate. So why can’t I hold my phone in my hand and talk on speaker phone, but I’m perfectly welcome to hold a CB microphone and do the same thing?

Although, if I got a CB, I’d have to learn an entirely different language, so that may not be the best option. I’ll constantly be having to ask if other truckers have their ears on, and alert them to my 20. I’ll need to let them know if they have Smokey the bear knocking on their back door, and whether it’s Evel Knievel, a gumball machine, a county Mountie, or a plain brown wrapper. Or maybe it’s a Kojak with a Kodak, in which case they’d better listen to their bird dog and slide off the hammer.

That sounds like too much work, especially since most of my car trips are just taking the kids to and from school. I barely remember when to do that, so I can’t be keeping track of all the bears as well. Plus, I’m not sure I could fit an eighteen-wheeler into the school parking lot. And besides, I like my phone and I want to keep it. So I’ve come up with a plan.

Here’s the next big new idea that someone else can make millions on, since I’m too lazy to do it myself. We need CB radio microphones that plug into the headphone jack on our smartphones. That way we can all talk to each other on speaker phone, just as before, but now we’re perfectly legal again, since it’s a CB microphone and all. Sorry iPhone 7 users. You guys are out of luck on this one. You won’t get to have a cool trucker handle, or say ‘over’ after every sentence like we will.

So, anyway, I’m thinking we need those, or as an alternative, phones cleverly disguised to look like bananas.

Either way will be fine with me. Just let me know when they’re available on Amazon.

See you soon, I’m 10-7. Y'all keep the shiny side up and the greasy side down. Tome Raider over and out.

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!