My iPhone

When I turned 60 a couple of years ago, my wife went out on a very thin limb and bought me an iPhone 3G, thus making me the last human on Earth to own a cell phone. I’d never had any use for a cell phone (discounting telemarketers and wrong numbers, I receive about two phone calls a week and make about the same). But I had been following the hype of the iPhone and was somewhat curious about all the bells and whistles (not actual bells and whistles, of course; I don’t know when actual bells and whistles stopped being included in appliances) that the iPhone promised – the internet, email, gps, camera, video, radio, iPod, and oh the billions of apps. I was dubious when I unwrapped the package and saw what it was. Not only do I not have much need of a phone, but my history with all technologies is a sad trail of confusion, contusions, and creative cursing. I dropped the phone while taking it out of the box, bouncing it off the floor. But I gave the iPhone a chance. The gift was well-meaning and intended to bring me at least into the late 20^th century, if not the early 21^st. And two years later, I use my iPhone regularly. I check the weather several times a day. I surf the internet, read newspapers, listen to radio, check my email, read books, try to find myself with gps, find restaurants, etc. with my four pages of apps. I’m still learning, and have a ways to go. (I don’t text message and never will. What’s the purpose?) But the one thing I still rarely use on my iPhone is the phone function itself. I happened today for the first time in two years to go into my usage summary for the current billing cycle (halfway through the month), and this is what I found:

Anytime Minutes	39 of 450
Night & Weekend	74 of 5000
Rollover Minutes	0 of 4257

Anybody want to buy some minutes? As I said, I don’t have a big need for a phone. I’m glad I have it. But my fascination is with the convergence of all the technologies into one gadget. And I’m considering looking into the iPhone4 (hey, it has video). But it’s a slippery slope. The iPhone5 – or whatever – is sure to be just months away. Maybe they’ll phone me when it comes out. Or text.

Two Contradictory Ideas

For many years, decades actually, I held in my mind two contradictory notions about my father. First, that he had never gotten beyond the eighth grade. And second, that he had played on the Wichita East High School golf team. One would think that a mind as sharp as mine would have struck upon this paradox long before his death, but the revelation of my obliviousness didn’t strike me until I was sitting with my mother in the office of the mortician, answering questions about my father’s life. “Wait a minute” – I thought to myself as my mother answered the question of how far he had gone in education with “high school” – “I’ve always believed he never got beyond eighth grade.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald quotingly said that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” I don’t think he had my mind in mind at the time. But then he probably was talking more about abstract ideas than facts. It’s one thing to believe that there exists intelligent life elsewhere in the universe (based on theory), while also doubting that it does (based on lack of empirical evidence). It’s another thing to believe that one’s father never got beyond the eighth grade (figment), while also believing he played high school golf (fact). But the mind is a curious thing, and it’s just as likely – perhaps more likely – to hold the latter as it is to hold the former. Sadly, there just aren’t that many Fitzgeraldian first-rate minds. Certainly you aren’t reading one of them now.

Mefloquine

We’re going to India next week, and so have to have malaria medication, and here’s the warning, laminated that I’m supposed to carry in my wallet, that came with the prescription:

Mefloquine can cause serious mental problems in some people. If you take mefloquine and you have sudden signs of serious mental problems (such as: severe anxiety, feelings of mistrust towards others, seeing or hearing things that are not there, depression, feeling restlessness, unusual behavior or feeling confused), you should contact a doctor right away as it may be necessary to stop taking mefloquine and take different medicine to prevent malaria.

As I told the pharmacist when she pointed this warning out to me, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to recognize these side effects from my normal mental state. But there are potential physical problems as well as mental problems with the drug:

Other side effects from Mefloquine may include: convulsions, liver problems, and heart problems. The most common side effects of metfloquine include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, dizziness or loss of balance (vertigo) which may continue for months after mefloquine is stopped, headache, and sleeping problems (sleepiness, unable to sleep, bad dreams).

So just how is this better than malaria? George Clooney has had it (twice) and he seems to be just fine. Better than me, truth be told.

Talking With Kurt Vonnegut

I once had a telephone conversation with Kurt Vonnegut. Maybe. It was my senior year of college, and somehow my roommate, Gerry, and my best friend through high school and college, Gary (all English majors) had somehow got Vonnegut’s son’s phone number in, as I recall, Connecticut. This is all very vague memory. But I think we reached the son, and he said that his father wasn’t there, but that he, the son, would call us a bit later when he, the father, would be there. And he did. And his father, Kurt Vonnegut, was all of a sudden on the phone. We passed the phone around. I have no recollection what we talked about, probably mostly about his works, maybe something about the Vietnam War, both shared subjects of interest. After a half hour or so, we hung up. And then the speculation began. Was that really Kurt Vonnegut we were talking with? If it wasn’t his son we first contacted (or even if it was), why wouldn’t he have just told us to fuck off and hang up? Why would Vonnegut agree to talk for half an hour with three goofball English majors in Kansas? Why would someone who wasn’t Vonnegut chat with us for half an hour pretending he was?

I talked recently with my friend Gary (also on the phone, as it happens), and he mentioned in passing this incident. Which means it’s not a figment of (only) my imagination. Obviously whatever the content of the conversation – if it really happened – is unimportant. All that’s important is that three senior English majors, in the spring of 1973, the year Breakfast of Champions was published, were able to spend some time talking with one of their contemporary literary heroes. So it goes.

Milestones of Aging

Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends
(Paul Simon, “Old Friends”)

Age is, of course, relative. We all know this. But still we tend to cling to the convenience of marking our time in years and decades. I had lunch last week with an old (no pun intended) friend who has recently turned 60. On his birthday, his wife asked how it felt to be 60, and he replied, “Pretty much like 59.”

For most of us, the real milestones of aging are not years, but events. Consider my process of growing old, not atypical I expect:

• 50 years: An invitation arrives in the mail to join the AARP. I join and begin taking advantage of hotel discounts and road assistance almost immediately. I still feel healthy and jog three to four miles a day. But something vaguely ominous shimmers on the horizon.
• 52 years: My dermatologist discovers a basal cell carcinoma on my upper right arm. He’s able to dig it out in his office. As he cauterizes it, the smell of burning flesh is pungent, and I can’t get the thought of Joan of Arc burning at the stake from my mind.
• 55 years: I fear I have carpal tunnel syndrome, but am diagnosed with tendonitis of the elbow (“tennis elbow”), and attribute it to shoveling snow. I undergo physical therapy for a few months and improve.
• 58 years: I begin to experience occasional pain in my left knee, sometimes excruciating. X-rays are taken, an MRI, and I’m diagnosed with osteoarthritis. I have several corticosteroid shots. I stop jogging and start walking.
• 58 years: My father dies. My wife and I are on a biking weekend in Wisconsin when we get the call.
• 58 years: Our first grandchild is born, a lovely baby girl. We start a college fund for her, and I worry about living long enough to watch her through it, or at least long enough for her to have some memories of and with me. I recall the many student papers from my composition courses about fond memories of grandparents and hope she’ll have something to write about me if she chooses in her first comp course.
• 59 years: The little and ring fingers on my right hand are curling into the palm, pulled by stiff nodes along the tendons from the fingers to the palm. I can’t use my little finger to type. The diagnosis is Dupuytren’s contracture. I go into the hospital (the first of five times this year) for surgery, which ends up being only partially successful. I adjust my typing method to nine fingers.
• 59 years: My left knee buckles in a hotel parking lot in Chicago. I buy a cane in a drugstore on the trip home. Knee replacement surgery. Months of physical therapy. Two manipulations (trying to force the knee to bend while under anesthetic). After seven months, I haven’t reached my flexibility goal, but I am able to walk recreationally and bike (if still with some pain). The receptionists at the orthopedic clinic don’t have to ask my name anymore when I come in for one of my regular appointments. “Who are you seeing today, J.L.?” is all they ask.
• 61 years: I jump at the chance to take early retirement from teaching, particularly freshman comp. The burnout began some fuzzy number of years ago.
• 61 years: Reading in the AARP magazine that music is something that keeps the mind engaged in retirement, I decide to take out my guitar again, after . . . I don’t know how long. But because of my arthritis, I can only spread my fingers over three frets, rather than the four of the past. As with typing, I’ll have to adjust. But then adjusting is just another way of saying growing old.