A week ago, give or take a day or two, after learning my Tacoma Trio of two nephews and a niece, David, Theo and Ruby were now smart phone enabled, I text messaged each member of the Trio to tell them something was heading to their location, which at that point in time was to arrive during a delivery window of December 15 - 21.
The text messages to the Tacoma Trio told them not to open the incoming package til Christmas Eve.
A couple days ago I got an email telling me the package had shipped, and would be delivered December 15. I texted that information to Big Brother David and asked him to pass that information on to his siblings.
And then, yesterday, December 12, I got a package tracking update telling me the package had arrived in Tacoma and was out for delivery.
Shortly after reading the package was out for delivery I got another package tracking message telling me the package had been delivered.
I then texted Theo telling him I am being told the package he and his siblings are not supposed to open til Christmas Eve had been delivered.
Theo then texted me back with the text saying "Thank You!!!" along with the photo you see above, showing the aforementioned package now resting under the Tacoma Trio's Christmas tree.
When I was a kid I did not have a smart phone. There was one phone in the house. It was attached to a wall in the hallway. If I remember right when I was David, Theo and Ruby's age we were on a party line, sharing a connection with next door neighbor Mrs. Ferguson.
Way back then you paid extra to make what was known as a long distance call. Just calling from Burlington to the Grandma's in Lynden was a long distance call.
And now, I pay a measly $50 a month for two phones with which I can make as many long distance calls as I want, send as many text messages as I want, send photos, video, all without incurring any additional charge.
And the phone is not attached to a wall.
Over a half a century ago Seattle had a World's Fair. The Century 21 Exposition. One of the pavilions in that Exposition was called, if I remember right, "The World of Tomorrow". You toured a house from the future. Well, what someone thought the future would look like. The kitchen had what we now know as a microwave. A huge bulky thing. One wall was a viewing screen, sort of like our current flat panel TVs. The video phone of tomorrow was a big bulky thing looking like an old style computer monitor.
It is interesting when one lives long enough to be living in that long ago badly imagined future, with the actual future turning out to be way more amazing than anyone imagined long ago, like in the 1960s.
And now, in the actual future, pre-teenage kids have phones with more capabilities than a computer had 20 years ago. And they can text message their favorite uncle who lives a couple thousand miles away, and send him photos.
With no long distance charge.
What a world...
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