There are a number of advantages to carrying around, and using, a PDA. One being that it is much smaller and more compact than your average computer or spiral notebook. My particular PDA is also rather pretty, especially now that it lives in a small black case with “Don’t Panic” written in large, friendly letters across the front. This is silly, of course, and not particularly clever, but it does make me inordinately happy.
However there are also some important advantages of the tried, true, and antiquated method of recording information with a pall point pen. Namely that I don’t have to plug it in, or relearn how to write each letter. Also, for all its state of the art forward thinking, my palm does not include such vital and entertaining characters as *, (), or #. At least, not that I have yet discovered.
I am currently sitting outside Maude’s café in downtown Gainesville, which features delightful deserts named after famous singers, and a wide array of delightful hot and cold coffee (at least, I assume its delightful, I don’t drink coffee), served at the convenience of the typically surly and bored staff. Surly, bored staff are the true mark of a quality college town café. So are plastic green tables and chairs. I am currently enjoying a Harry Belafonte and a blackberry Italian soda. The slightly punk waitress with the dyed auburn hair has just brought me my check, much too early. They do this, I suspect, to convey the idea that they do not need my money, as they are remarkably hip, surly, and busy. They are also, they want me to believe, incredibly popular, and need not subsist on something so trite as a tip. I shall counter this by tipping her expansively.
Or, perhaps, I shall not.
If you were reading this from my increasingly less empty purple notebook and not from a later version, typed into my laptop, you would notice that my ink changed from blank to blue midway through the word “blackberry”. This is because the slightly chill wind has disturbed my long, curly hair, and I have chosen to use my other, black pen to hold it back in a bun.
I tell you this to convey my atmosphere at present, and to give you an idea of my hip surly, popular life which has prevented me from updating as often as I ought to have.
This is a lie. I am simply lazy. A hip, surly, popular life would not, I think, include working with 2-4 year olds at a preschool in the sleepy town of Alachua.
But I digress. I am actually here to talk about my new Palm, which now rests securely in its black case with “Don’t Panic” written uncreatively on the front, in my bag where my pen and paper used to be.
I bought the Palm yesterday. I had been considering the purchase as a useful tool for keeping track of my two jobs, at the preschool and the theater, for over a month now. I held off the purchase in deference to my mother, who is pragmatic and disapproves of technology’s tendency to provide expensive solutions to non-existent problems. I bought it yesterday in deference to my father, who shares my enthusiasm for shiny, new technology. He has owned a Palm for years now. He wears it on his hip and is incapable of remembering important information without it. We call it his “pocket brain”.
I bought this Palm, which I have named “the Thing of Evil”, at BestBuy, on the way home from my first-aid and CPR training, which is, incidentally, the one appointment in the last month that I could have benefitted from having written down in a pocket brain.
I entered BestBuy with the euphoric anticipation that always precedes the purchase of shiny, new pieces of uselessness. I walked immediately to the PDA display, which surrounds a large help desk, and proceeded to stare at the things for twenty minutes without a single offer of help.
I eventually decided to employ the BestBuy version of Wayne’s “can I help you” riff, which basically consists of picking up an expensive piece of equipment, and stabbing at it in a playful, uninformed manner.
Immediately Pam appeared at my side, asking if I needed her help.
Her name probably wasn’t Pam. I had, of course, forgotten her name only moments after she’d told it to me. I choose to use “Pam” here because it was proposed last night at our pumpkin carving festivities as an alternative personality for one of my friends. It’s sticking in my mind.
Pam was a short, intimidating African-American woman who spoke rather quickly and made it seem as though she lived in the exact same conditions as I do. I didn’t quite believe her; she did not have nearly enough cat hair on her outfit.
After patiently answering all my attempts at asking intelligent questions (“What’s the difference between the processors?” “The Dragonball VZ processor is slower.” “Oh. I thought that one might make the Palm fight epic battles in impossible landscapes conveniently located next door.”), Pam managed to convince me that if I simply couldn’t do without a PDA that instant but didn’t want to spend an ENTIRE paycheck on one, then the Palm of choice was the Tungsten E Palm Pilot. And of course, I’d be needing a hundred dollars or more in accessories.
Alas, none of the accessories made the Palm fight epic battles in impossible landscapes conveniently located next door either. They didn’t even give the Palm tall, spiky hair and a red gi, which would have been my next guess on why the processor was called the Dragonball VZ. They did, however, allow me to paint “Don’t Panic” on the cover in red acrylic, and protect my screen from being scratched. I even managed to get a moderately complete OED and thesaurus featuring a Word of the Day.
I didn’t buy any games though. I must save some technological wonders for my next trip to spend too much money on useless gadgetry.
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