I got the large wide flat boxes from my Dad maneuvered between the wheels and out from under the bed and was trying, including using a broom handle, to reach all the stuff that had fallen between the headboard and the mattress.
Note that a startup company a few miles away, years ago, decided to make a competitor to the then-popular Palm Pilot with more features, like a camera–and decided at the last second that it might have an even bigger market if they added a phone. Rumor is that they almost didn’t but smarter heads prevailed. There was an early version of text messaging.
And that is how the Sidekick came to be. All the cool people in Hollywood had one, all the tech nerds wrote about it. Not that that’s something I would normally know or care about in the slightest, and not that I normally aspired to own the latest electronics. But Richard’s co-worker camped out in front of the store to get one of the very first ones to be sold, showed it off at work, and then my hubby went straight there at 5:00 pm to buy one, too.
The moment he showed it to me I said, And did you get two? Because this is a deaf person’s phone and I need it more than you do.
It was extra cool that the young handsome face on the box clearly living the happy life with this perfect new gadget just waiting for you inside! happened to be our daughter’s high school classmate. Hey, I didn’t know Dan modeled! (Probably his mom worked there, and she knows a good-looking kid when she sees one.)
Richard went back.
And that is how the smartphone craze got started: a company called, don’t ask me why, Danger.
Can I…reach that… I snagged it!
Out it came from under the head of the bed.
An empty box for a Palm Travel Kit. Had a charging cord and everything, it said!
I stared at the thing, trying to grok it. That’s like a leash to go take my pet dodo bird for a walk.