That said, I do have select favorites, as revealed in this 2012 column that artfully dances around something that would never get near the paper today, for a variety of reasons. First, because we have to buy our own phones now. And second, well, you'll see.
A batter who decides to not swing at a ball lets it smack into the catcher's mitt — I don't have to explain that, right? The beauty of sports metaphors — everybody understands them.
The original headline was "A smart phone king of the hill." Make sure to notice the game metaphor in the last sentence.
"Can I turn Neil on?” she asked. I contemplated her — blonde, expectant — while weighing my response.
Sometimes your whole career can teeter on a knife edge. The person to whom she was posing the question — a technician standing by me — said nothing. I gazed at an imaginary spot floating in the air about a foot above my head and to the left, and simply waited.
“I’m going to let that one smack into the mitt,” I said, taking refuge in sports metaphor. They both looked at me blankly.
“Sometimes you have to just leave the bat on your shoulder,” I elaborated. Another long pause.
“Ohhh...” she sad, getting it, or pretending to. “Turn on” — an antiquated phrase that old people use. Shades of “Tune in. Turn on. Drop out.” An inappropriate 1960s drug/sexual reference. All three of us busily turned our attention to the device that she had called by my given name. Its actual name is a Samsung Galaxy S II or, to use the vernacular, a phone.
Smart phone week at the Sun-Times, and we all trooped up to the 10th floor to meet our new devices — our second selves, apparently. I don’t want to make too big of a deal about this woman calling my phone by my name. Lots of products have been anthropomorphized over the years. Hats, for instance. Freud wrote an essay arguing that hats are symbols for men, a common sentiment a century ago. “Your hat is YOU!” one company advertised.
We aren’t that direct about our phones, but their impact on the murky nether worlds of the id and the ego are the same. Some of my colleagues received Apple iPhone 4s, the rest of us got Galaxies, and, vain as newspaper columnists tend to be, I instantly focused in on the pecking order aspect — was this an indication of status? Am I “out”? Have I been slighted? Apple of course is the platinum, ne plus ultra electronic device. I could see a sleek white iPhone 4 box with Rick Telander’s name written on it. Of course. The best for the best. The Samsung box, meanwhile, is half yellow with rainbow discs. It looks like something made to contain a cat toy. Was I not Apple-worthy? If my phone is going to be me, shouldn’t it — shouldn’t I — be the best possible? I raised a weak protest — could I not just take Rick’s iPhone instead? He doesn’t care. He doesn’t need status from his phone. I do.
No, no, the tech folk said, obviously used to such pleading. These decisions have been made high above. The Apples are for people ... well ... who need Apples. The Samsungs....
“Yours is bigger!” the tech guy said brightly, subtly returning to the object-as-a-man motif. Indeed it was but .... well, let’s move on.
I was booted over to a third tech person, an earnest man in his 20s who had the tech guy outfit right out of Central Casting: blue jeans, plaid shirt, unshaven, newsboy cap. He pointed out the button used to turn the phone on, instructed me how to press that button, then became lost in trying to link to the network.
I watched. An odd moment — the phone wasn’t even mine yet, but already on the fritz.
“For the record, I haven’t done anything to it yet!” I announced to the room.
“Play with it!” he enthused, continuing the metaphor, shooing me out the door. “Try new apps!”
A few pokes and the apps popped up. Books. Lewis Carroll. “Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.”
You and me both, Alice, you and me both.
An hour later, back in my office, the new phone surprised me by ringing. I took the Galaxy out of my pocket, fumbled to the phone screen, and tapped the green button. And tapped. Yet it didn’t answer. Later, my 14-year-old son — who has had this phone for a year— explained, “You have to SLIDE it.” Oh, of course. Why didn’t anyone tell me that? Seriously. At least tell us how to answer the phone. At lunch, I met my brother.
“Got a new phone!” I bragged, then told him about the Apple v. Samsung crisis.
“This is better,” he said, and gestured down to his phone — a Galaxy S. Now, I don’t know much about phones, but I know that the S II is better than the plain old S. His has a tiny keyboard that slides out — obviously a technological dead end.
“The S3 is coming out,” my brother said. “I’m not sure when, but I might get it.” Until then, I have the best, most up-to-datest. I immediately checked to see how long I’ll enjoy the Alpha Dog Samsung. Until June 21. That’s when the new S3 arrives. Two weeks. This technological king of the hill is a losing game.
— Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 6, 2012
The original headline was "A smart phone king of the hill." Make sure to notice the game metaphor in the last sentence.
"Can I turn Neil on?” she asked. I contemplated her — blonde, expectant — while weighing my response.
Sometimes your whole career can teeter on a knife edge. The person to whom she was posing the question — a technician standing by me — said nothing. I gazed at an imaginary spot floating in the air about a foot above my head and to the left, and simply waited.
“I’m going to let that one smack into the mitt,” I said, taking refuge in sports metaphor. They both looked at me blankly.
“Sometimes you have to just leave the bat on your shoulder,” I elaborated. Another long pause.
“Ohhh...” she sad, getting it, or pretending to. “Turn on” — an antiquated phrase that old people use. Shades of “Tune in. Turn on. Drop out.” An inappropriate 1960s drug/sexual reference. All three of us busily turned our attention to the device that she had called by my given name. Its actual name is a Samsung Galaxy S II or, to use the vernacular, a phone.
Smart phone week at the Sun-Times, and we all trooped up to the 10th floor to meet our new devices — our second selves, apparently. I don’t want to make too big of a deal about this woman calling my phone by my name. Lots of products have been anthropomorphized over the years. Hats, for instance. Freud wrote an essay arguing that hats are symbols for men, a common sentiment a century ago. “Your hat is YOU!” one company advertised.
We aren’t that direct about our phones, but their impact on the murky nether worlds of the id and the ego are the same. Some of my colleagues received Apple iPhone 4s, the rest of us got Galaxies, and, vain as newspaper columnists tend to be, I instantly focused in on the pecking order aspect — was this an indication of status? Am I “out”? Have I been slighted? Apple of course is the platinum, ne plus ultra electronic device. I could see a sleek white iPhone 4 box with Rick Telander’s name written on it. Of course. The best for the best. The Samsung box, meanwhile, is half yellow with rainbow discs. It looks like something made to contain a cat toy. Was I not Apple-worthy? If my phone is going to be me, shouldn’t it — shouldn’t I — be the best possible? I raised a weak protest — could I not just take Rick’s iPhone instead? He doesn’t care. He doesn’t need status from his phone. I do.
No, no, the tech folk said, obviously used to such pleading. These decisions have been made high above. The Apples are for people ... well ... who need Apples. The Samsungs....
“Yours is bigger!” the tech guy said brightly, subtly returning to the object-as-a-man motif. Indeed it was but .... well, let’s move on.
I was booted over to a third tech person, an earnest man in his 20s who had the tech guy outfit right out of Central Casting: blue jeans, plaid shirt, unshaven, newsboy cap. He pointed out the button used to turn the phone on, instructed me how to press that button, then became lost in trying to link to the network.
I watched. An odd moment — the phone wasn’t even mine yet, but already on the fritz.
“For the record, I haven’t done anything to it yet!” I announced to the room.
“Play with it!” he enthused, continuing the metaphor, shooing me out the door. “Try new apps!”
A few pokes and the apps popped up. Books. Lewis Carroll. “Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.”
You and me both, Alice, you and me both.
An hour later, back in my office, the new phone surprised me by ringing. I took the Galaxy out of my pocket, fumbled to the phone screen, and tapped the green button. And tapped. Yet it didn’t answer. Later, my 14-year-old son — who has had this phone for a year— explained, “You have to SLIDE it.” Oh, of course. Why didn’t anyone tell me that? Seriously. At least tell us how to answer the phone. At lunch, I met my brother.
“Got a new phone!” I bragged, then told him about the Apple v. Samsung crisis.
“This is better,” he said, and gestured down to his phone — a Galaxy S. Now, I don’t know much about phones, but I know that the S II is better than the plain old S. His has a tiny keyboard that slides out — obviously a technological dead end.
“The S3 is coming out,” my brother said. “I’m not sure when, but I might get it.” Until then, I have the best, most up-to-datest. I immediately checked to see how long I’ll enjoy the Alpha Dog Samsung. Until June 21. That’s when the new S3 arrives. Two weeks. This technological king of the hill is a losing game.
— Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 6, 2012
If you are gonna use an Android, get a Pixel.
ReplyDeleteGot an early iphone5 and thought I was a techie queen. Well, at least my friends thought I was when they saw it and compared it to their now antique flip phones. Upgrades continue to this day as we are back to the flip phone. A never ending saga.
ReplyDeleteI don't think sports metaphors need retiring as long as baseball remains strong in our consciousness. Phones are evolving much faster.
ReplyDeleteSitting next to me as I type this is my old Samsung Galaxy S III. It cannot access the Internet anymore and has no phone service, but its clock app has a nice big timer display that's enormously helpful for outdoor grilling, and if it falls off the folding grill table, no worries, as it's long since had a cracked glass and massive chunk taken out of its left edge, ever since I dropped it on the train just three months after I bought it.
That wasn't really my point in writing today, but it strikes me that we're already starting to reminisce about these smartphones as being of a simpler time, and yet I wasn't all that happy at having to buy it in the first place. I was perfectly happy with (and really impressed by) my Motorola KRZR flip-phone, an even-smaller, even-cooler looking redesign of the original RAZR. Making calls was a breeze, voice dialing, and a really satisfying, Star Trek communicator style of hanging up: slap it shut and shove it in your pocket.
My current phone is a Samsung Z Flip3, a smartphone with a folding screen, just so I can maintain that flip-phone experience a little while longer, paddling my boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. I wonder what our next metaphor topic will be.
We have a sports-adjacent metaphor that was coined in Chicago - "out in left field". The original Cub's ball park was on the west side of Chicago. When the Cubs moved to the site that is now Wrigley Field, the state bought the land on the west side and built a psych hospital where left field once was. The Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of Illinois Medical Center still stands in that spot.
ReplyDeleteBingo. They built the psych hospital in the left field corner of the old West Side Grounds, where the Cubs played for decades before moving to the North Side in 1916. Hence the baseball term. Thought it came from Ebbets Field, and the Brooklyn Dodgers, but that wasn't so.
DeleteMy mother once told me that my father was an outpatient there in 1947, at 27, while I was still in the oven. They called it combat fatigue in WWII. It's known as PTSD now. He never saw any combat, during the enormous fight to take the enormous city of Manila, but he saw plenty in its aftermath.
At least 100,000 civilians died, in the city and its suburbs. Messed him up, but good. Came home and took it out on his wife and kids for the next fifty-plus years.
So are you saying that the trauma from the war caused him to be abusive for 55+ years? If so, would you give a description of the abuse. I am not asking you to relive that. Just a brief expansion of "took it out on his wife and kids". For example was it only verbal, or verbal & physical? I am interested in knowing the long term effects of trauma. My mother & her sisters endured abuse from their "alcoholic" (their word, but now the proper term is "alcohol use disordered" father per my mother's stories of her childhood. But the same man was my grandfather & was very good to his grandchildren despite the fact that he continued to drink alcohol daily for the rest of his life.
DeleteAnon 7:11--How much time have you got?
DeleteHad a father but never had a dad. Not for nothing did my kid sister and I call him Old Yeller. Not even sure if it was because of the war. Have no idea what he was like as a young man. My mother never told me much, but she did say that he told her, when they married at 21: "Without me, you're an unimportant nobody. And nobody else will ever want you." Picture coming into focus yet?
Booze did not contribute. He crashed a wedding at 19 or 20, got drunk and sick in front of a hall full of strangers, and rarely imbibed for the rest of his life. I did something along those same lines at 14, but that's another story for another time. And have already told it, more than once.
Dealt with everything on the abuse menu: Physical, verbal, emotional, psychological. Physical lasted until I grew big enough to deck him, which he knew I could...and would...and it stopped. The verbal lasted until his final days, as did the emotional and the psychological. Many head games. Saw a number of shrinks, starting at 12.
He had a short temper... and a shorter fuse. His way of solving a problem? Throw money at it--until it stuck. He was a professional (CPA) and a good earner, so he could indulge in that kind of solution. A good husband, father, brother, son, uncle...not so much.
My kid sister endured something far worse than what I've described. Something that was unknown to me until only a few years ago. Learned way too much information. Wiil not elaborate here. Use your imagination.
So that's the game summary...for whatever it's worth.
Hope it helped you. All the best.
Sounds like he was a malignant narcissist. "Without me, you're an unimportant nobody. And nobody else will ever want you." This statement tells it all. There is no cure for them. They are so self-centered that to them the world revolves around them. They can't be helped because they don't think they need help. It is always someone else's fault. My mother was a narcissist as was her mother. They always blamed everything on my grandfather's drinking. Eventually my grandparents divorced. My grandmother dated lots of men, all of them heavy drinkers. She actually married again - another "alcoholic" - didn't last long. My grandfather moved in with my aunt, kept on running the gas station. He let us grandchildren have all the cokes & snacks we wanted at the gas station & brought us a gift every Christmas. My grandmother never gave us a gift EVER in her entire life. She was extremely verbally abusive to us. My mother's behavior would change from honey sweet to a screaming, cursing, fit-pitching tyrant in a blink of an eye & it was impossible to know what would set her off. She's been dead almost 10 years but the behavior lives on. I see it in my siblings & their offspring. I don't know if it is genetic or latent trauma. Some of them are now on psychiatric meds. I just wish POTUS would realize that the trauma he has inflicted on so many will probably be his most lasting legacy.
DeleteThat's a nice olden days, baseball catcher's glove.
ReplyDelete