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But Mom, I Want To
Steal This Phone!
by Mad Dog
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If someone
swipes your phone, you can remotely wipe the phone's memory clean, lock
the phone so it won’t work, and cause it to emit a loud, annoying,
high-pitched howl that won't stop until the battery's removed. You know,
like the smoke alarm just outside the kitchen. |
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It’s a shame, but we
spend an awful lot of time, money, and effort trying to keep people from
stealing things. We have alarms in our cars so they can go off at random
times during the night and remind us how precious an undisturbed night
of sleep can be. We have motion detectors in our houses that call the
police if a particle of dust moves suspiciously in a room. We have
multiple locks on our doors, CDs encased in big plastic frames at the
music store, and bulky security tags attached to clothes that leave
snags and pulls that “will come out in the wash” but don’t. And
god help you if you want anything at the drug store.
Nowadays half the items at the drug
store are locked up. If you want razor blades, condoms, or eye drops you
have to find an employee, then wait while they find the one employee who
has the key so the case can be unlocked. If they’re going to make it
that difficult they should deduct my bill for the time wasted from the
price of the item. And whatever you do, don’t get a runny nose. If you
want Sudafed you have to take a hang tag off a rack, wait in line at the
pharmacy, show them your ID, then sign a form. Hell, I can buy a handgun
quicker than that. Granted it won’t help a stuffy nose, but it could
help get the Sudafed quicker.
I’m not completely ignorant of the
problem here. I mean, god help us if I were to take that 24-tablet
package of Sudafed and turn it into a couple of nanograms of speed. Come
on, no one’s that desperate. But like taking my shoes off before going
through airport security and knowing the government can listen in on my
phone calls without a court order, keeping the Sudafed locked up makes
me feel safer. Yeah, right.
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With luck it will have a gentle voice that reminds you when
you're talking loud enough for everyone to hear the details of your sex
life, apologizes to anyone in the room for having played a ringtone from
High School Musical, and tells you to hang up when you're driving
and not paying attention to the road.
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One thing that will be safer soon is your cell phone. Well,
providing you use a new service introduced by Synchronica, a company in
England with a name that sounds like a drag queen at Joan Crawford
Night. Now if your cell phone gets stolen you won't be the only one to
scream, your phone can do it too. That’s right. If someone swipes your
phone, you can remotely wipe the phone's memory clean, lock the phone so
it won’t work, and cause it to emit a loud, annoying, high-pitched
howl that won't stop until the battery's removed. You know, like the
smoke alarm just outside the kitchen. The service costs $18 a month,
which means you’d better have at least one cell phone stolen a year to
make it worthwhile. If you get the cheap phone they give away when you
sign up like, well, like some people I know do, you’ll need to have
one stolen every month.
While this could be handy, I’m
going to wait until the next version is released. With luck it will have
a gentle voice that reminds you when you're talking loud enough for
everyone to hear the details of your sex life, apologizes to anyone in
the room for having played a ringtone from High School Musical,
and tells you to hang up when you're driving and not paying attention to
the road. It would also be more useful if, instead of the alarm, it had
a parental voice that said, “Put that phone down! I knew you’d never
amount to anything. You could have been a lawyer, the president, or even
a cowboy like you said you wanted to be for the first 16 years of your
life. But no, you’ve resorted to stealing cell phones. Didn’t we
teach you better than that? Now put that phone back where you found it
and don’t let me catch you doing it again.”
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Face
it, most kids have never been given a time out, sent to their room
without dinner, or even yelled at by an angry smoke alarm. |
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This would definitely be more effective. A study conducted by the
Center for Injury Research and Policy at Columbus Children's Hospital
(motto: “Honesty is the best policy, it’s the injury research part
we’re still working out.”) found that children who were in a deep
sleep would wet their bed more often. Just kidding. Well, about the
study showing this anyway. What they actually found was that children
who were in a deep sleep woke up faster and more often when they heard a
recording of their mother’s voice telling them to wake up and get out
of the room than they did with a smoke alarm. The study didn’t get
into why this might be, but it’s probably the familiarity of the
voice. Not to mention the Pavlovian response to the fact that they could
get a spanking if they don’t listen to their mother. Face it, most
kids have never been given a time out, sent to their room without
dinner, or even yelled at by an angry smoke alarm.
Putting alarms on everything won’t
make the world a safer place. Nor will it make it a quieter one. But if
alarms sounded more like mothers and less like colicky robot babies on
steroids at least we’d get a bit more sleep. Well, unless it was your
mother telling you that someone was stealing your car. I’ll be right
there, Mom!
©2006 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Your
mother says to read them.
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