By Ilene Black
My grandmother always thought that putting a man on the moon was a big mistake. She was convinced that no good would come of messing around on the moon.
Since that July day in 1969, Grams blamed the Apollo 11 mission for everything that went wrong. Extreme weather? Two guys walked on the moon. A flu epidemic? It’s Neil and Buzz’s fault. Lately, Dad and I often wonder what Grams would make of all the “newfangled” inventions that have appeared in the 20 years since she’s been gone.
For example…..
The other day, I saw on the news that someone has invented a little baby onesie that has this miniature computerized decal on the front of it. It’s like a baby monitor, only 1,000 times more sophisticated. (This from the woman who was amazed at baby monitors.)
This decal thing reads the baby’s heart and respiration rates and sends the data directly to the parents’ smartphone. It acts as an early warning system in case of an asthma attack or croup. We had something similar to this when we were raising our kids. It was called, “Lean over the crib and listen to the baby breathe.”
There are a bunch of other products like this for babies. One has computer chips inside a toy frog that record a baby’s vitals and sends the data to an LED display on a parent’s coffee cup. Their coffee cup. Grams is shouting in heaven, “Get off your lazy keister and check your baby,” and muttering, “See what happens when you put a man on the moon?”
How about this one? A toy frog is connected by some fancy technology to a milk-warmer. The frog hears the baby cry and the milk warmer automatically turns on. I imagine that this does not work for those babies who are breast-fed. Yet!
Next there will be a technology that gauges how wet the baby’s diaper is and how long a parent can get away with not changing said baby until a rash begins. Such data would more than likely be sent to an LED device on a wineglass.
Or a device that turns a baby’s wails into actual words, so that the parents know exactly what the baby is crying about.
Example: Baby cries. Toy frog interprets hunger. Sends distress signal to automatic milk-warmer. Automatic milk-warmer turns on. Parent tries to force baby into drinking warm milk. The Crying Translator Device switches on and translates the baby’s crying into something like, “Get that bottle out of my mouth and hand me my toy baseball bat,” or “I could swear I told you that I absolutely HATE this outfit with the giraffes on it.”
Here are some things that need to be invented really soon:
1) An app that senses when I am tired or aggravated and automatically brews a cup of coffee for me. Oh, wait. I already have that. The app is called “my husband.”
2) A device that would allow me to become invisible, unseen and unheard whenever I wanted. On second thought, I have that capability already. It’s otherwise known as “When I start talking to my sons about menopause.”
3) A machine that makes a holographic hand appear out of thin air and slap anyone who annoys me, allowing me to avoid those pesky assault charges that can accompany such actions.
4) A Cone of Silence that comes down and surrounds me with a clear plastic bubble and is activated by the push of a button (for those of you of a certain age, you will recall the old TV show “Get Smart.”).
5) Technology that creates a moat around my house when people selling magazines or vinyl siding come around and bug us. Options for the moat should include alligators, dragons and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
I cannot imagine what Grams would think of the world today. Cell phones. The price of gas. Or food. Or everything. Yet I can picture Grams with an iPad, sitting on her couch, commenting on Facebook. Because she was hip.
Yes, I believe that Grams would have embraced all the changes in the last twenty years. Better than I have. DARN that Neil and Buzz anyway.
Ilene Black has been a resident of Ewing for most of her life and lives across the street from her childhood home. She and her husband, George, have two sons, Georgie, 32, and Donnie, 28. A licensed soccer coach, Black was head of the boys’ travel soccer program in Ewing for many years and ran the township’s annual Labor Day Soccer Tournament for several years. She is the creator and moderator of a Facebook group called, “You Know You’re a Ewingite When…,” which has more than 1,000 members. Her motto is: “There is humor in every day. You sometimes have to search for it, but it’s there. So laugh loudly and often.”
