- Mason Cooley
My PDA crashed.
If you don’t carry a PDA, perhaps you cannot know the seriousness of my situation. If you do, you no doubt feel my pain.
Once a person inputs all of ones days into the PDA, adds the contact information for every person one has ever known and synchronizes and backs up all that information, there is no turning back. A PDA is only slightly less than a flesh-and-blood life coach. Properly maintained it tells you what steps to take, when to take them, which direction those steps should fall and it provides phone numbers and addresses for all those you might need to call while on the journey. It even grabs all your email for you if you tell it to. It can hold family pictures. It can tell you your flight and hotel confirmation numbers. It can remind you what you need at the grocery store, what books you want from the library, which movies you want to rent... Mine would even talk to me (though I never figured out how to get it to do that). At least it used to do all that. Now it is gone. And for the past couple days I have been clumsily attempting to stay on track without it. It hasn’t been pretty.
The good news is, today (after an appropriate 48 hour mourning period) I went out and bought a new one. The new PDA is at this moment plugged into the wall receiving its initial charge. I have two more hours until I can set it up and get on with my life.
Two hours. I can wait. Really. I can.
I’d twiddle my thumbs but I’m typing.
From where I sit writing these words into my Mac I can hear the clock on the landing at the top of the stairs ticking. Tick, tick, tick tick tickticktickticktick. Time passes slowly when you’re waiting for your PDA to charge up for the first time. Two more hours and I can plug it into the computer and transfer my life into its memory. Until then, I sit. I wait.
It has been said the hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure. I never have liked that clock. It used to chime every hour on the hour until I opened up the back of it and removed some of its innards. Now it just ticks.The Irish playwright Dion Boucicault once said, “Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.” Fun guy, Dion. I’ll bet he was the life of the party. Bet he never had a PDA crash on him. In fact, I’m sure of it. He died more than a-hundred years ago. Time finally killed him.
I have so much to do. Can’t wait to get started.
One hour and 58 minutes to go.
**
A long time ago, back when I started doing my first morning radio show and found it difficult to get going so early each day, someone told me a mousetrap placed on top of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep.
I prefer the subtle electronic chirp of a PDA alarm.
(To send Brad an email: click on his photo at the top right of this web page and then click “email.”)
