Basta text - text tayo OK?
(notes from YLB: on these rapidly waning days of the dying year, and as hearts beat faster for the unstoppable, impending and inevitable advance of the new, we take this opportunity to thank all who have shared glimpses of their personal selves; the road-less-travelled perspective with which they view life; attitudes and sentiments which sometimes not even a face-to-face may reveal; faves and pet peeves that are part and parcel of the healthy exchange of every friendship, online or otherwise; and most of all, the shared memories, recounting and retelling of wonderful tales and blasts from the past without which our lives would be incomplete.. . as this enumeration will take the rest of the post, we just have to say that EVERY single person who has taken the time not only to post a short note or reminder (or even forwarded email) to the '82 e-group, but also to just read, scan or give the once-over to whatever messages posted therein, we offer our humble thanks.)
Cellular phones are the conceptual reverse of vestigial organs. While male breasts ( for lack of a better example ), tailbones and front flippers in sea mammals are empty and useless remnants of formerly functional appendages & orifices, we continue to find new uses and applications for celfones, those once-bulky, geographically limited cup-and-string originals that have now become our 6th and even 7th senses in terms of supra-sensory communication and perception.
Everybody has at one time or another come across a story on how a child or pet was found in seemingly deep, dark, hole, thanks to the mobile phone at their side. How many times have trapped or marooned travellers and extreme sports enthusiasts, mountain scalers and wall climbers been saved by signals emanating from their N90s?
We are all able to communicate, at the touch of our fingertips wherever our feet transport us, to any point of the globe. We may do this textually, via letters & symbols ( as we are doing now ) orally using the spoken word, or even visually via images and pictures. All these media and platforms are available courtesy of that one instrument, your handset.
Nostradamus could not have known how dead on accurate he was going to be when he foresaw an era where Man would communicate not just via words but via sounds, images and moving pictures.
Just earlier today, i sat on a mall bench for the better part of an hour just watching the world pass me by. Well, better than 95% of that world that was passing me by as I watched it was grasping with busy-busy fingers Nokias, Motorolas, Sony Ericssons, iPhones, Blackberrys and every other conceivable hand-held piece of formerly futuristic flag-equivalents ( that's how people greeted each other in olden days, right? ), with little or no exception, whether they were moms & pops, teeny-boppers and pre-teeners (factoid : at least a third of the cellular phone market is entrenched in the 21 & under demographic ), drivers and yayas, lolos & lolas; crunching the numbers thats, in three-quarters of an hour, more than 950 out of 1000 celfone users barely touching the bridge of my nose.
Taking the cake is a precocious Grade 4 nephew who thinks nothing of going out with a celfone dedicated to the numbers of his yaya and driver, another cel for his dad and classmates, and a PSP unit (which btw has bluetooth facility for online gaming) all stuffed, along with snotty hanky and Timezone gamecards, into his deep cargo pants pockets. How far removed are we, with our perfumed stationery, Atari Pong / Game & Watch units and barya-barya for the jeepney driver from our HS counterparts barely 2 decades hence?
i thought up a few scenarios that would have been possible had we the magic of cellphone wizardry, allowing us to prevent grief many times over but on the other hand would have made learning a less exciting experience :
SURPRISE QUIZZES FORESTALLED. Since all of our classes, unlike college sections, underwent the same subjects every day, some classes would have known, ahead of others ( not unlike earlier time zones ), whether or not a palpitating, PMS ravaged teacher had unleashed his/her bad mood early in the morning and given a surprise quiz to the unfortunate first class of the day. Complete with questions and a heads-up on the general mood of the teacher, the lucky succeeding class would then be equipped to handle the sumpong of the "quizzical" maestra, wag lang obvious masyado. Of course, the class that took advantage of the "raw" intelligence would then be honor-bound to return the favor for some other subject in the near future, preferably also using SMS text.
SCISSORS RAID FOREWARNED. For all his superhuman efforts Fr Tchou could not have conducted a scissors raid more than one floor at a time... this means the texting brigade if it had existed then would have extended between worried males of different year levels. Kung nauna yung mga Seniors, pwede nang warningan mga longhair sa lower levels in higher floors, or vice versa. The "shearing" candidates would then be able to hide wherever their adrenalin aided legs would carry them.
WILL YOU BE MY TEXTMATE? How many of the lovers of today were able to court and declare to each other their undying love via text unlimited, textsulit and pasaload? I have seen youths, my own progeny included, forego merienda just to be able to buy phone credit, just to be able to text sweet nothings, just to be able to give their "ewan" to cute admirers. On the flip side, how many romances were cut short and aborted just because the praning girlfriend was able to intercept / read SMS text messages that were meant for their wandering syota? I am sure if Batch 82 had had the luxury of texting as early as our freshman year, we would have had as many matchups / breakups / repeat-the-cycle before Junior schoolyear as we would have had for the entire time we were in HS, without that communication phenomenon.
MORE SOPHISTICATED CARPOOLS, LESS TARDINESS. Celfone communication would have allowed more impromptu carpooling as it would have made scheduling more efficient, the overall effect would have been to save more gas consumption and more hatid socializing among batchmates in the same general area like Binondo, Sta Mesa, San Juan, etc. Because of the updating facilitated by SMS, we would also have less lates as students would be able to avoid heavy traffic areas and make Mr Gelido happier right after Flag Ceremony.
Happy 2009 everyone !
YLB
NOel