WhatsApp is great! It
may just be one of the most genius inventions EVER!! I mean, imagine being able
to text (who needs to talk? That’s soooo 20th century) with anyone
you want anywhere in the world, and not having to pay one single cent for every
message you sent. Genius.
And to someone like me, whose family is spread out far and
wide (and I mean FAAAAR and WIIIIDE), the neat opportunity of finding out what
everyone is up to at the single touch of my fingertips, just makes family feel
so close (without the added inconvenience of actually having to be close to
them, yah know?). So, it stands to reason that I felt eager to have the little
app added to my iPhone, and myself added to my beloved family unit’s group.
Instant gratification. As soon as the app was on my iPhone, the first ‘ding’
took less than 2 minutes to be heard. Oh! A message!! So, I go and check it out, to find out
immediately that it was one of my nieces sending a message to another one of my
nieces, half a world away, but since I’m part of the group, I get the message too.
I spend a very entertained afternoon reading what the younger lot of my family
has been, is, or will be up to… and the evening, and the early hours of the
morning, and noon…. and the darned thing doesn’t. Stop. Dinging!!!... And not a
single one of the messages is actually for me. That’s what I get for trying to be
interested in my family.
But, when the one niece in Spain is sending texts at 9:00 AM,
just on her way to school, to the other one that is in L.A., just getting ready
to party at midnight, with input from the gallery in Washington state, south
Florida, and lord knows where else, it wakes the fudge up of this ole lady who
is trying to sleep at 3:00 AM (what? None of you sleeps with their cell phones
next to them??). Whoever thought it was a good idea to be THIS connected?!? Especially
when you have a gang of girls (and one lonely guy), ranging in ages from 12 to
23+ in your family. And that is excluding the ones under 10, which I KNOW are
just bidding their time to come out and deliver the final blow that will off us
all.
And, yes, you could very easily just turn the phone to
silent mode, but then, the light goes on every time a message comes through,
and no matter how much willpower you think you have, the lure is just too
strong. You can’t help yourself. You just need to see what the last ditty is
about!! Believe me, I have tried. I am like a drug addict: I know this is not
good for me, but I just can’t help it. And I know I’m not the only one. People
have been known to have gone insane within this crew. Legend has it that my
poor aunt down in Venezuela was last seen pulling her hair out and throwing the
danged phone into a pond to “make the
voices stop!”
As for me, I found the feature to mute them all (yeay!!),
but the longest I can mute them for is one week. One week of silence. One week
of blessed peace… and then, the closer we get to the end of the week, my eye
starts twitching, my breathing becomes fast and shallow, my skin is clammy, my
hair disheveled…. “Are you feeling ok?,” some concerned stranger asks. “Oh,
she’s fine, it’s just that the voices are about to come back,” my 9 year
old answers…
Technology can help too in these cases. I don't know about the iPhone, but my Android has a nice feature where you can schedule a "Silent" mode to run every night. When I mean Silent, is SILENT, no vibrate, no light, nothing (It might still receive calls, of course). So every night at 10:00 PM, my phone goes to "sleep" (Although still receiving all those crazy girly texts) and "wakes up" at 7:00, when the "Dings" start again. (Advantage, Android) :-)
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