There's an App for That! A true story from long ago.

Back in the early Eighties, (or the Late Walkman Age just before the Early DVD Age as they are now known in history and science texts), I had one of those leather bound bricks we euphemistically referred to as 'phones'. You know, the black plastic brick with the mini penis sticking out the top which came with a complimentary genuine, imitation leather phone condom to slip it into. The phones where you could almost, most of the time get a sometimes clear connection for one to two minutes at a stretch but had to carry judicially otherwise the bicep of your dominant arm would be twice the size of the other one inside about a month?

I was walking along Central Park West with my Zenith Black Brick model X21 in my left hand, (I'm right hand dominant), when I got a call. On a bench next to where I stopped to take it sat an old man in a Mets baseball cap and red flannel shirt, easily in his 90's.

When the call was finished, due to solar flares affecting the relative trajectory of the earth's rotation secondary to Mars being in juxtaposition with Aries, the old man called me over.

"You a cop?"

"No." I responded not bothering to

explain that I had in fact applied to the NYPD years prior but was declared ineligible. My parents were married. "Why?" I asked.

"You got a walkie-talkie. I thought maybe you was a cop!"

"This isn't a walkie-talkie. It's a phone."

"A PHONE?!" He gasped. I handed it to him and he examined it. "How far can you talk with this thing?" He grunted as he scanned it.

"Theoretically, with a sat-com connection, anywhere on earth." I informed him.

He cocked back his Mets baseball cap, fell back on the bench and the colour drained from his face. That's when it hit me. This guy was born before movies, television, even radio! The revelation that the world had come so far in his relatively short life time was a genuine shock.

I had a strong urge to sit and chat with that old guy but I was running late. I had to get to the phone repair store.

I've always had the impression that few people are aware of the age they're living in. The poor schmucks in the Middle Ages who suffered through the Plague, the 100 Years' War, which dragged on for 116 years, the Inquisition or the Crusades or the invention of Boy Bands and Pop music were no doubt painfully aware of the times they were living in. But even the educated, for the most part, are not really 'aware' of the times they are living in.

Back at City University we had to take a course entitled 'Man and Technology'. Pre-meds, engineering and sociology students were all required to take it their senior year. The idea was to orient us, people who were going to make their living at dealing with people, about how people throughout time adjusted, or didn't adjust, to new technology.

It was taught by three professors, one from each discipline all at once, in an auditorium large enough to house my entire primary school.

Dr. George Kelly, the Biologist, never used the microphone, never needed it. He had served in Patton's Third Army, landed in Gela, Sicily in Operation Husky, fought at Anzio, all the way up the Italian peninsula and fought on into Germany and was in on the taking of Berlin. He was a combat medic when they used to close wounds on the battlefield with safety pins. He had been wounded himself, twice. Real world experience wasn't an issue.

Everyone knew his bio and he was well liked.

Dr. Ludcheck, an Eastern European civil engineer who had escaped the Nazis by travelling to the States truly believed the streets there were made of gold, all people were treated as equals and anyone could rise to fame and glory. In other words he bought into the program.

Dr. Manning was a right wing liberal who, sheltered by the university system from his first year in college, had never ventured outside and so had no clue of the real world. Any and all knowledge he had ever obtained about anything came from a book.

It was Manning's turn to start the show and the topic according to the syllabus was nuclear energy.

Dr. Manning took the podium, adjusted the mic and opened his part of the three hour lecture.

"Nuclear energy, how has it been received by the public?" Kelly and Ludcheck took their seats at the back of the auditorium. "I would like to start my talk with the unnecessary bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

As if someone were shooting a Michael Jackson video, on the director's cue, the entire auditorium stopped writing, dropped their pens and looked up awaiting the ensuing attack. Also on cue the F4U Corsair strafing began, with Dr. George Kelly in the pilot's seat.

"NOW WAIT JUST A GOD DAMNED MINUTE THERE MANNING!" Kelly, flying down the center aisle, finger waving, yelling and with his long, white lab coat flapping behind him like Super Prof's cape was down in front of the podium in seconds ignoring Manning and holding court to the entire class.

"UNLIKE YOURSELF I FOUGHT IN THAT DAMN WAR AND WHEN WE FINISHED WITH THE NAZIS AND WERE TOLD WE WERE NOT GOING HOME BUT HAD TO PACK UP AND NOW GO FIGHT THE JAPANESE, I WAS GOD DAMNED GLAD THEY DROPPED THAT BOMB!"

Slightly more calmly George then proceeded to relate the casualty statistics he had personally encountered in the last two and half years of fighting and the estimated death stats they could expect based on the battles which had been fought against the Japanese so far.

His emotionally induced tirade lasted a good ten minutes but being the gracious scientist he was Dr. George then apologized for his outburst and headed back up the aisle of the auditorium.

But there was no doubt about the temperature of the lecture hall.

As he retired to his seat George got a rousing ten minute standing ovation from all 500 students replete with hooping, hollering and all sorts of other hillbilly styled expressions of support to the point that the eloquent old doctor of biology turned beet red with embarrassment and had to temporarily leave the room.

Manning readjusted himself at the podium, attempting to ignore the applause then spent about five minutes more reshuffling his notes discarding the first dozen pages or so and finally stuttered into a continuance.

"Well . . . obviously there are differing opinions. We shall now turn out attention to the Three Mile Island incident."

As with anything, it's all about perspective. People react to new technology in different lights.

A quarter of a century after the Central Park encounter, (only a few years in my void-of-time-parameters mind), after the old man on the bench incident I was in the lounge of the hotel where I live with several other guests watching a DVD of the beer contest scene in the comedy film Beer Fest when a song came on that I had never heard but liked.

"Anybody know the name of that song?" I threw out to the room.

"Put it on hold." A cute little twenty-something said. I always listen when cute little twenty-somethings speak, so I manned the remote.

She walked to the TV and asked me to press 'play', I did and she punched a few buttons and held her palm-sized phone up to the plasma screen for a few seconds, read the read out on the phone's screen and turned to me.

"That's Plastic Bertrand singing Ce Plane Pour Moi. It's French!" She gleefully informed and re-took her seat to which my mind instantly responded with:

"HOW THE FUCK . . . ?!" I felt like I was 90 years old sitting on a park bench in Central Park with a cute little twenty-something educating me about 'Apps'.

Where's my Mets cap?

THE END