and we’re waiting for brunch after our order ticket
was dropped out of the queue due to a server error,
talking with our friends visiting from Sacramento—
he’s a professor sick of watching grinning young faces
turned downward into their laps where their hands are
moving vigorously. Please stop texting during my class,
he says several times a semester. Through the morning,
I have made it a point to glance into my red smartphone
and run thumbs across its keypad, but now I pretend it
is vibrating and pull it out of my pocket with annoyance
and disdain. Like this thing, I cry. It never lets me be!
And I throw it into my water glass where it splashes
spray onto the table and then sits magnified through
the glass and the cold water. My smartphone is under-
water. Nobody says anything. My friends are stunned
for ten seconds at least before they begin to fish around
for a question or something appropriate to say now that
our down-with-technology mantra has come true. It is
that crux of time that’s the joy of the trickster, the joy
of the fool. A shout out to my friend Janet who is a pro
photographer and thought of me while she was getting
rid of a set of fake cell phones that are no longer being
used in ads. That thing made April 1 very special for me.
