#1125 Fresh Phones

It’s funny. We get into the habit of saying certain things and never really questioning them. And sometimes an old habit reaches across to a whole different technology.
In the habit of saying something dumb, my friend Rick pointed out to me that he was in the grocery store the other day. The sign that caught Rick’s attention was one that said “Fresh Produce.”
“Fresh Produce” begs the question. Do they have a stale produce section? Wouldn’t we naturally assume it was fresh? We say frozen vegetable but we don’t often say frozen produce.
Maybe there’s a little known section of the grocery we haven’t heard about, tucked away behind the lentils and bulk hominy. Cheaper blotched potatoes that, with a little whittling, are still suitable for stew. Maybe a bin of blemished apples, perfectly acceptable for cider or applesauce, but not teacher presenting material. Maybe there’s a whole section of blackened bananas, just waiting for someone to bake up a big batch of banana bread or banana porridge.
All produce doesn’t have to be fresh and still be usable. Like our concepts. An old concept can migrate from one object to another.
The other day for instance, I was visiting my girlfriend. And I had occasion to remove my phone from my pocket and have her hold it while I did something at her place. She put it in her coat pocket and we both forgot about it until I got back to my house. I called her using my landline and asked her to bring it to me the next day.
Then I had an inspiration for a humorous remark, and I said she could feel free to look through all my texts and call records.
“I wouldn’t do that,” she said.
“That’s okay,” I said, “My life’s an open phone.”
See what I mean? The open honesty is the same, only the technology has changed. And our phones really are the equivalent of a book of our life.
So I’m thinking, it might be a good idea to delete those stale texts and data and keep them fresh. You may have some black bananas in there ready to trip you up.
America, ya gotta love it.