Smiles Cannot Be Retrieved
The cellphone is our whole life and as such, we don’t like any activity that interferes, with what we think is the right to be online. This includes a smile.
It is not retrievable. It’s not like online content which we can retrieve by date or subject matter. In fact, the system tells us what is ‘trending’ or sends notifications to our accounts, based on our passion, to use internet-speak.
Despite that, we are in self hostage. The internet is holding us hostage at our own free will. In the process, we lose precious things we cannot touch, quantify, package and sell.
Kids disturb our right to be online as a result, we miss the first smile, the first tentative steps and the smile when they’re asleep. That cannot be retrieved.
People we live with smile at us for no particular reason. It cannot be retrieved. We don’t see it because Diva Siren’s fourth marriage to a man she met online, is more captivating.
Before the pandemic, we went to the movies and listened to the directive that we should switch off phones. Does that exist in corporate Canada and America?
When you massage your phone while someone is making a presentation, you miss the smile on her face, when she acknowledges the department you oversee. Other people in the room smile and look your way, but you don’t see the silent applause. The moment cannot be retrieved.
Because the cellphone is our life, we miss the smile on a mother’s face when she puts on the table a serving dish with Valencia paella or an oven dish with piping hot shepherd’s pie. Cooking can be cantankerous.
Sometimes, it doesn’t turn out the way the home chef wanted, so it warrants a smile when it does. The cellphone is at the dinner table, so her smile is lost. It cannot be retrieved.
The smile - which cannot be retrieved - is no match for the cellphone, full of posts that can be retrieved later. In fact, if cellphone addicts had their way, they’ll be no people on earth to ‘nag’ them when they are online.
This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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