Pocketful of Miracles

I think cell phones are a great invention. I know, they can be annoying at times like when someone has an annoyingly loud and inane conversation in a  restaurant. It just takes some common sense (and common courtesy) to figure out when to use one. But it's a great way to stay in touch with children or to take callbacks from doctors' offices while running around town. I wonder how many lives have been saved in accidents since cell phones are commonly available for emergency calls.

I remember going to pick up the girls at the airport some time in the late '90's and being shocked at how many cell phones there were in use.  As a teacher I didn't get out much and the world changed in the meantime.

Though I'm fairly adept with a cell phone. Amy showed me how to do predictive texting, and since both she and Alyssa prefer to communicate through texts it's a good thing. Other features mystify me.  Occasionally my phone, which I keep in my left front pants pocket, will call a number on its own. Or it starts talking, unbidden.  Spooky. And there was the time I put two hotel room cards in succession in the pocket with my phone which damaged the cards. Magnetism is a powerful force.

The oddest thing I've done with a cell phone, though, is somehow take a picture of the inside of my pocket. I don't know how to operate the camera on the phone but somehow the camera goes off occasionally on its own. I became aware of this anomaly when I was looking through the features of the phone to see how many I had no idea how to use and came across 43 pictures of the inside of my pocket in a folder under "Pictures" on the phone. (Strangely enough.) For those who would like to know what these pictures looked like, here's an example of a picture of the inside of my pocket:

Exciting, huh? I think it looks like an empty region of outer space. (I guess there are such things. I was an English major, after all.) Or maybe it's a black hole which will suck in the entire universe next week. In that case, I wouldn't have to worry about learning all the features of my phone.

The fact that a picture of a small space (my pocket) looks like a picture of some of the universe reminds me of the discussions we had in college about microcosm and macrocosm.  We concluded, I believe, that at extremes there is no difference between the two. Today, I have no idea what that might have meant but then it made total sense.

Apparently there's more room in my pocket than I thought. Maybe that's where the single socks go to hide when they're washed. Stranger things have happened.