I had a conversation with Deion yesterday. He's 13 and very wise beyond his age. But there are times that I forget about the world that he lives in.
"Dad, if I get all A's can I get an iPhone?"
"Yeah, but you've gotta get all A's."
"What if I get 1 B?"
"I'll get you a pager."
"Huh? What's a pager?"
It dawned on me that this kid had NO idea what a pager was. So I had to break down to him what a pager was. I explained to him how his dad rode around Atlanta with $10 in quarters in my car in the event that somebody paged me. I think I may have been the last guy in the world to get a cellphone. Deion was born in 1999. I don't think I got my first cellphone until 2000.
As I was explaining to him the process of getting a "beep" and then using a payphone to call someone back, I realized how far we have come in technology. Pagers were every thing back in the day. A pager on your hip was a fashion statement that people wore like an accessory. You had to make sure that you had some fresh batteries (i always used Duracell) because you didn't want to miss a page. Unlike cellphones, you couldn't charge a pager.
After my brief lesson in technology, I realized that he was more focused on getting an iPhone than getting a pager. I didn't tell him that pagers are pretty much extinct now. So in his mind...it's all A's or nothing. And that's the way that it should be.
