Two sweet little elderly ladies walked past my table at Panera Bread today. One of them stopped right next to me, pointed, and said, “Look, he’s reading.”
I was holding my Kindle, which is an electronic reader.
The other woman turned with wide-eyed amazement and said, “Oh my goodness, look at that, would you?”
Very proudly, I showed the Kindle to them and described some of the features of it. They “oohed” and “aahed” as if I had just invented the wheel. In fact, while I was describing the Kindle to them, I felt like I was somehow responsible for the creation of the device. I even used the word “cyberspace” at one point which is really sad because I don’t actually know what it means, but I’m sorry, I got caught up in the moment and they were very impressed.
A minute later they walked past me again and I was sending a “tweet” with my cell phone. I mentioned that I was tweeting about my conversation with them and you would have thought that I was a time traveler from the future! In fact, one of the ladies touched my shoulder—I think—just to see if I was real, or not. (It’s also possible that she was just wiping some ketchup off her hand.)
It was cool! For just a brief moment—with the over-80 demographic—I was very close to being a techno-hipster! (I was even thinking about growing a goatee.)
Then 2 minutes later, an 11 year old kid walked past me, with an I-Pad or something. I don’t know what it was, but it was much fancier and more state-of-the-art than my Kindle and my phone.
He looked sadly at my devices, as if they were fossilized artifacts from an ancient civilization and his eyes caught mine. He shook his head with a smirk on his face that said, “You poor old guy. Look at you! You’ve got no goatee and you’re stuck way, waaaaaaaaay back in late 2009!”
Then, with a little chuckle, he climbed onto his hovercraft and flew silently out of the restaurant.
…Or maybe he just walked out. I can’t remember for sure.
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