The second-silliest traffic arrangement in the Meadow City \u00e2\u20ac\u201d second only to the welcome-but-stay-off-this-street messages on Seventh Street \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is around the Old Town Plaza.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
There are five ways to enter the Plaza: from Bridge Street, North Gonzales, Hot Springs, West National and South Pacific. But in some cases, once you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in that magic circle, you still need to yield to traffic coming from Hot Springs and from South Pacific.<\/p>\n
The configuration \u00e2\u20ac\u201d called a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153circus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in other countries \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is bad for traffic rounding the park and heading east, toward Bridge Street, or back around the park.<\/p>\n
Most cumbersome is having to yield to traffic coming from South Pacific, in the area of Art and Stones. Why? Because the stretch is w-a-y too long, and by the time motorists yield for one car, there are more coming down the pike.<\/p>\n
Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it be great if all traffic entering the park area needed to yield to vehicles already there?<\/p>\n
Wednesday, as I was entering the Plaza from South Pacific \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I had the right-of-way \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I got cut off by a woman driving a big car bearing veterans\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 plates. Though she was supposed to yield, she apparently never saw me. I could see she was punching buttons on her cell phone (otherwise, she was trying her luck at a game of Pac-Man).<\/p>\n
I wondered why an elderly woman (well, my age anyway), would be driving distractedly as she texted someone. Texting is the act of tapping letters into a cell phone and sending that message to someone else, who will read it off the screen. I previously believed cell phone usage was restricted to the young, who believe a cell phone works only in a moving car.<\/p>\n
My family became intrigued by the cell phone some 10 years ago when a friend loaned us hers, as we drove to the airport. And though there really wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t any urgency, we became curious and unpacked a huge phone in a box that could have held a dozen pairs of shoes owned by Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines.<\/p>\n
First question we all ask when calling another cell: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Where are you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d First statement we all make if calling a land line: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re here at the airport, calling on our cell.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Did we realize a decade ago, when we first tried out that behemoth, that technology would evolve to the point where everybody had a cell phone? We used to worry about how to notify authorities if we saw a breakdown or an accident on the highway. Once, we drove to a phone booth in Bernalillo to make our call.<\/p>\n
Currently, emergency crews probably worry more about receiving too many calls for the same accident. Yet it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s safer that way.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a difference, however, between simply talking on a cell phone and texting while driving. Texting differs from conversation in the sense that it requires pressing keys that spell out a message.<\/p>\n
Anyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever entered names and numbers into a cordless phone knows that it takes practice. The first letter key, for example, contains A, B and C. In order to enter a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153C,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the puncher needs to punch the same key three times.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s complicated enough. So how can people, while driving, avert their eyes long enough to think through a process complicated enough for one who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stationary? Is there a one-key-equals-one-word arrangement? Yes. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called T9, and it intuits what you input, but that gets complicated.<\/p>\n
I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figured out how to get my cell phone out of the T9 mode which simply infers my meaning. And this lust for cellular knowledge stems more from curiosity than necessity, as I have never (on my own) completed a text message; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received only a couple and wondered, Why not just talk instead of looking at, hitting, and sometimes missing, those little buttons?<\/p>\n
During a rainstorm last evening, I sat on the front porch determined to stop the first kid I saw and ask for advice. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know the name of the boy on a bicycle who came into my driveway desiring shelter under our Chinese elm.<\/p>\n
He instantly became the subject of my experiment. No, he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t own a cell phone, but yes, he could help. So with Rachmaninoff-type strokes, he punched out a message which he sent to my son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cell phone. Diego responded instantly, but all I learned was 1) that the neighbor child had been able to conjure up a message, 2) my son received it and 3) he responded.<\/p>\n
As to the magic of the process, the how-to-do-it nitty-gritty technique, I never caught it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like modes of instruction in which the teacher says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Watch me\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let the tyro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hands touch the equipment.<\/p>\n
Some define \u00e2\u20ac\u0153genius\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as the ability to make the difficult seem easy. What then must have been the reaction of observers decades ago when an expert typist would churn out 80 wpm without even looking at the keys? Have today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s youngsters acquired such a skill?<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m impressed by the digital dexterity of the neighbor but was also told that most kids his age, around 12, are just as adept. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing to text home about.<\/p>\n
Last night, with grandson and namesake accompanying me, and hoping to emulate our elderly woman with veterans\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 plates, I drove to the Plaza to try composing a text message while in the car, holding the cell phone inches away. I concentrated, seldom looking up from the cell phone. It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work, and I was unable to locate the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153delete\u00e2\u20ac\u009d key.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, not a single motorist honked or yelled at me, admonishing me to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hang up and drive,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or flipped off my flip phone or me.<\/p>\n
And that might be because people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t usually honk at, yell at or gesture to people who are parked well off to the side, as we were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The second-silliest traffic arrangement in the Meadow City \u00e2\u20ac\u201d second only to the welcome-but-stay-off-this-street messages on Seventh Street \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is around the Old Town Plaza. Let me explain: There are five ways to enter the Plaza: from Bridge Street, North Gonzales, Hot Springs, West National and South Pacific. But in some cases, once you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}