It’s doing it again

—“Be-be-be-be-beep!”
I had just put down my iPhone, and again it was making a pocket-call; this time to a person I recently Facebook “friended” in the middle of the country.
This time it was Facebook Messenger’s “video chat,” Facebook’s iteration of Apple’s “FaceTime.”
This person and I had been messaging regarding how technology seems to have distanced everyone.
Not the first time. A few weeks ago I mistakenly pocket-called the same person. Suddenly a voice was emanating from my rear pocket: “Hello hello?”
This may have only been Messenger’s “audio-chat.” My iPhone screen was blank (black), but this person was talking to me.
I’ve voided many FaceTimes to my aquacise instructor. We both have iPhones, and happen to be Facebook “friends” after SuckerBird and his cronies secretly trolled my iPhone contacts. I had her in my iPhone from her business-card.
Apparently my pocket-calls to her were just Apple’s FaceTime, not Facebook Messenger’s “video-chat.” My iPhone “recents” indicated that.
La-dee-DAH!
Ever-advancing technology has inundated us with many wonders.
“Call ****,” I voice-command into my iPhone. It calls my brother in far away northern DE.
“Call ****,” I say into the iPhone Bluetooth in my car, and it calls my other brother somewhere in Altoona PA, where I haven’t even arrived yet.
Similarly, I speak “Call ****” into my iPhone at our motor-lodge near Altoona. That brother and I are in separate rooms, and I need to ring him up. I can do that without a two-way radio?
I also keep my grocery-lists in my iPhone. That’s a lot less time-consuming then having to update a written grocery-list, since —a) that iPhone is always in my pocket, and —b) I’m adding by voice instead of keying in.
Again: “La-dee-DAH!”
Wondrous technology, but every day something.
Time-saving technology seems offset by time-gobbling hairballs. This morning I had to reboot my in-house Wi-Fi.
And that of course was after “Why is this not working?”
Guile-and-cunning had me rebooting my in-house Wi-Fi. Another friend my age would be calling his grandchildren, or pulling the plug.
And now our TV is often by wire, instead of over-the-air as it used to be.
Now I unlock my car over-the-air, plus it won’t even run without that radio-fob in my pocket.
Does my mid-country friend know what rabbit-ears are?
I bet she does. (Like me she was probably born in the wrong century.)
“You can remove that mask,” my Altoona motor-lodge attendant said.
“Do you know what an iron-lung is?” I asked him.