That Machine I Promised Not to Mention Again

Couple of funnies — these are also indicative of how convinced Mars is that the concept of the iPhone will change our society.

I had trouble sleeping the night after I bought my iPhone. It was like the night my first child was born, and I just lay awake and stared at him all night long.

Oh, all right! It wasn’t really like that. That’s an ennobling, life-changing experience, and cannot be compared to getting a new cell phone.

At least, not much.

I did go to bed at a decent hour that night, but I had to get up in the night to let the barking dog in, and when I went through the kitchen, I saw the glow of my charging phone, dutifully checking my e-mail every three seconds or so.

I couldn’t resist. I picked it up, took it back to bed, and lay in bed playing with it. A couple of times, Mars rolled over, squinted blearily at the phone’s glow, and went back to sleep.

But he didn’t forget the phone. At one point, out of the blue, he said, “Is your phone still tuned to The Honeymooners?”

I love to have conversations with him when he’s dreaming. You never know what he’ll say (though usually it wakes him up). “No. Should it be?” I asked.

“Yeah. And point it at … ” He lapsed into mumbling, and I started to giggle, which woke him up. This was in the middle of a four-week-straight stint of working 14-hour days, recommissioning a boiler at the plant, so he dreamed of work every night.

In his dreams, he’d made a miraculous discovery: if you tuned the iPhone to The Honeymooners and pointed it at the boiler, it ignited the coal: a much simpler and quicker process than the traditional one.

But it had to be the old black-and-white television show. The coal just didn’t respond to the movie.

A little later, probably about 4 a.m., I coughed briefly.

Mars rolled over and said admiringly, “It can even do that?!”

Posted vicariously by WordPress’ software. Thanks, Matt!