Is It Just Me? (10 page)

Can’t you just tell your friends when you next see them?

You don’t need to see them – you tell them immediately online.

But then you don’t see your friends . . .?

Well, it’s good for, say . . . you could post pictures up there of your holiday and stuff for your friends to look at. But sometimes people other than your friends look at them. Which you know they’re going to do, and that’s sort of half the fun.

I wouldn’t let Milly’s friend, Minnie, look at MY holiday photos. She’s creepy. She sleeps in gloves.

Yeah, but you don’t know whether or not they’ve looked at your photos.

Oh, great. That’s not weird at all.

And if someone wants to get in touch but doesn’t know you that well, then they’ll just poke you or something.

They’ll POKE you?!

Forget it. I don’t actually do Facebook that much, anyway. I prefer Twitter, which is just messages, and people choose to follow you and what you’re saying.

What kind of things are you saying?

OK, let me look at my last thing I tweeted . . .

Tweeted? What are you, a bird?
YOU ARE OFFICIALLY INSANE!

I AM NOT! It’s called social media. Loads of people tweet.

OK, what did you last tweet on Twitter, you twerp-er?

I said: ‘My cat has rolled in the compost – disgusting.’ That’s not necessarily the best example. I also said afterwards: ‘Is it OK to Febreze a cat?’ which I thought was quite funny.

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long pause
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How many people are reading this groundbreaking news?

Well, I have around half a million followers.

OH MY GOD, ARE YOU A CULT LEADER? 500,000 followers! You must be the worst cult leader ever if you’re asking whether or not you can Febreze a cat. I don’t want to turn into you. I really don’t.

That’s it. I’ve had enough. Little M, it’s the future and it’s going to happen, whether you like it or not. Feel free to call up your friends on your big metal plugged-in phone and tell them all about it. I’m exhausted, and I am going for a bath. MDRC, feel free to join me (but in your own bath, in your own home – our relationship isn’t quite ready for bath sharing. I don’t think any relationship’s ready for that actually: I find the idea confusing, both for reasons of logistics and hygiene). So, to MY bath. Where I shall be taking my laptop –

What’s a laptop?

Oh, no . . . it’s a computer. Now go away.

WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU PUT A COMPUTER IN THE BATH?

Give me a break! I might just want to listen to the radio –

HOW THE HELL DO YOU LISTEN TO THE RADIO ON A COMPUTER?

AAAAAAAHHH! Enough. This is over. Over, I tell you. OV-AH (as you can imagine, MDRC, with that spelling I said that in a very aggressive, ‘street’ way. Ov-ah, innit).

What does
innit
mean?

I think it means ‘isn’t it’. But I couldn’t be 100 per cent sure. Now leave me alone for I am to bath . . .

No, you listen to
me
, granny-pants. I may only be eighteen, but I’m VERY worried about you and what this ‘technology’ is doing to you. Might I politely suggest that you’re so obsessed with screens, keeping up with trends, tweeting with thousands of unknown ‘followers’ on a computer and getting over-excited about your gadgets that you aren’t actually living a life? It seems to me that if you have a bath, you should just have a bath; if you go on a train journey, you should just go on a train journey; and when you go for walk, just be in the moment and walk, not chat on a ‘mobile’ phone. Don’t you remember we would sometimes go for a walk making up songs and little plays?

There’s no need to share that . . .

Don’t interrupt me, you mad digi-loon. You need to hear this. Do you remember what our life used to be like? Do you remember spending hours alone, just playing and being present and losing yourself in whatever you were doing? I think with all your gadgetry you are never really present, never really focused on making an effort to meet people and talk, because you can communicate so easily and quickly. But it’s not real communication, is it? Do you remember being with your friends? Nobody obsessed with whether or not they’ve just been ‘texted’ a picture of a pavement on their ‘mobile phone’. Do you remember any of this? You probably don’t, actually, because your brain’s so bloody scrambled from all the animal videos you’ve been watching.

Twig isn’t popular any more because all she ever does is play on her Game Boy and we can’t get a conversation out of her. And when Milly got addicted to her Pac-Man for a term, she missed out on the inter-house dance competition. She’ll never get back the joy of doing a routine to Yazz’s ‘The Only Way Is Up’. If you in the future are anything like that, you need to hear Milly’s loss.

You used to have good, happy, playful times you could really appreciate. You could really communicate with people, deeply, honestly and happily. I don’t want to be thirty-eight and so obsessed with twittering at my followers (whom I have NEVER MET) and getting poked at that I lose the ability to really LIVE.

Please remember that you were very happy before you got into all this techno-business. You may bang on about how I need to learn things from the future, but you’d do very well to learn a few things from the past. And if you really want some kind of technology, what’s wrong with the Rubik’s cube? That is HARD.
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punches air, collapses exhausted to the floor
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Phew! Gosh, that was a jolly good bit of public speaking, wasn’t it? I’m very talented. I am clearly wasted as an office manager and should defo-pants be prime minister.

‘You can learn from the past.’ I like that.

I am pleased with that and I am glad I have made my point.

‘We must remember to also learn from the past.’ Yes, that’s great. I’m going to tweet that . . .

Well, I don’t know about you MDRC, but I’m
exhausted
after that. I now declare it time for a literary pit stop; where we can catch our breath, have our individual baths, and a little mull-ette over our experiences so far. (By ‘mull-ette’ I mean a small mull, not an 80s hair-do for which, if I am ever prime minister, people will be shot for partaking of in the current age.)

Together we’ve romped gloriously through Music, Hobbies, Office Life and Technology, not to mention the ever-so-tiny topic of ‘Life’. Wouldn’t get that from a John Grisham, would you? No. What’s that? You actually quite enjoy a fast-paced legal thriller? Well, good for you. Ungrateful. For all you know, we might be about to enter the fast-paced legal thriller section of this little book-ette.
¹
You’ll have to wait and see.

I think we have done very well together so far. And I think we now deserve some fun. How about a little tick-box game? I know – thrilling. If you’ve done any of the activities listed below (and I VERY much hope you have), then please place a firm, joyful tick in the relevant box: