I’m in love and, ironically, the fact that this love letter is not directed to my husband will nevertheless delight him.
I’m in love with my phone.
In the last few weeks, as we’ve vacationed around, my iPhone has served as, variously:
- a camera to record charming children (fleeting moments that have to be captured lest we think we’ve imagined those brief periods when they arent actively trying to kill one another);
- a GPS to help me find the public library in a small Indiana town and then several weeks later a hotel in Cleveland;
- a DJ to identify who sang “Spirit in the Sky,” which was playing as I sat outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Do you know without looking it up?)
- and a keyboard on which I wrote a blog post whille sitting in the rooftop pavilion of the Cleveland Clinic.
When I look at how I hold my little plastic lozenge-shaped miracle tool, I realized what it is: a latter-day divining rod. Divining rods–diviners–were people who could find water using a dowsing rod, usually a fork-shaped stick; it’s from this old legend that we get the expression a “rainmaker.” A diviner, or a water-witch, helped people figure out where to dig a well, forecast the end of droughts, and generally found something where, previously, there had been nothing.
Isn’t that what an iPhone does? Look at the map and there you are, a blinking blue dot on a purple line, moving (you hope) closer to your destination. Download musicid and you’re able to hold up your phone to the radio and be told not only who is singing, but also find you youtube links and song lyrics. Click on the internet icon and mirabile dictu, you’re surfing the net. Like magic, my plastic lozenge pulls signals out of the air and translates them to pictures.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this puppy could help farmers in drought-stricken areas find water; “water-witching” might be the next killer app.
There ain’t nothing this baby can’t do.
