Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Teen Age Angst And Technology Don't Mix


The last picture for the "Men of Talbot's Peak 2012 Calendar" is DONE! Two guesses who it is...

On to other projects now. Next up: cleaning up the rough drafts of my two Talbot's Peak stories. Then after that, who knows?

~ Rebecca

************************************************************************

She was sitting at the end of the coffee counter and had been most of the day. Late teens, tall, thin but with some nicely proportioned curves that would fill out beautifully when she got older. Extra-long black hair, bright blue eyes and pure white skin. She would be a show-stopper if only she’d do something with herself, Marissa thought reflectively.

There wasn’t much the girl could do about the glasses, but they were the big chunky style so in fashion these days and could be played off as hipster without much effort. The clothes the girl was wearing looked like Salvation Army rejects, but that could also be spun into a hipster look with a few adjustments. The hair in the messy top knot secured with chopsticks was pure hipster as-is. Marissa stopped wiping down the counter and cocked her head to the side, looking directly at the girl now. There wasn’t really any reason she could see that the girl wasn’t a super popular hipster. Curiosity got the best of her, and she walked down to the other end of the coffee counter.

“Hi! My name’s Marissa. What’s yours?”

“Um.. [mumble mumble mumble]”

Marissa leaned forward, noting that the girl had failed to actually look up. She’d glanced at Marissa over the top of her enormous glasses but that was about it.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

The girl signed and finally looked up.

“Look, if you’re going to make fun of me, too, just forget about it. OK?”

“Um, I have no idea what you are talking about,” Marissa said, confused. “I just saw you sitting here by yourself all day and was wondering what’s up.”

“Look, I just made a mistake, ok. I didn’t know Siri was going to do that.”

“Ooook. Let’s try this again,” Marissa said doggedly, not willing to give up until her growing curiosity was satisfied. “Hi. I’m Marissa. What’s your name?”

“Joanna.”

“Good! Now we are getting somewhere!” Marissa exclaimed peppily. “And now that we have that out of the way, dish.”

“Um, dish?”

“Yeah. What’s got you so bummed?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the girl said morosely. But she didn’t turn to leave, Marissa noted. If she truly didn’t want to talk about it, she would have at least turned away, right?

“So,” Marissa said, thinking over their brief conversation to date. “Siri. You are having a problem with your iPhone 4S?”

Oh. My. God. Marissa thought a moment later. Boy howdy was Joanna having problems with her iPhone. Mental note: never gonna upgrade from my dinosaur Cricket flip phone!

The gist of the flood of angst and tears, to Marissa’s bemused guess, was that she had just gotten a new iPhone 4 for her birthday and told the Siri app on the phone to call her “Princess Buttercup,” thinking it was funny. The next day, Joanna sent her contact information to a boy she liked. Unfortunately, the Siri app recorded “Princess Buttercup” as a real nickname in her contact info—which also got forwarded to the new hottie. In the efficiency only found in high school gossip rounds, everybody now knew she’d told her phone to call her that. Total teen chaos had taken over poor Joanna’s life.

“Really?” Marissa said. “That’s all that’s wrong?”

“That’s all?” Joanna squeaked. “It’s enough! My whole life is ruined!”

“Nah, that’s easy to recover from,” Marissa said with a smirk. “And you can make Mr. Big Mouthed Hottie look like an ass in the process.”

Ah, yes, Marissa thought as the girl’s eyes first went wide with disbelief then narrow with interest.

“All you have to do is start a counter rumor. Say that you read on some tech blog that the Siri app does this and you’d thought it would be funny to try it. Say that you sent your contact info to Mr. Too Hot To Trot, thinking that surely a guy as cool as that would be up on all the latest tech news. Then just roll your eyes and shake your head. Walla! Everyone will be laughing at him instead of you.”

“You are so awesome! I’m going to go do that right now!”

Marissa stood back at watched the now-excited-rather-than-angsty teen grab up all her stuff and make a mad dash for the door. Ah, yes, she thought then rubbed her still flat belly. With any lucj, she’d be having a boy. Boys didn’t have that kind of silly melt-down. Did they?

6 comments:

Pat C. said...

Is that my boy Guri chowing down on the Christmas cookies? God, I love those eyes!

I'll have to take your word on the tech. As this last week and the IE fiasco proved, I'm at sea with anything more complicated than an on/off switch.

Rebecca Gillan said...

Yep, that's our holiday lovin', cookie munchin' tiger, Guri!

This week's flash is based off an actual techie blog about the iPhone 4S doing exactly that. Could you imagine being the first one to realize everyone now knows you like to be called Honey Buns in private?!?

Savanna Kougar said...

Rebecca, did I need advice like that way back when... even though, there was no high-tech stuff.

Yeah, I've heard app horror stories, but while I can get the gist of how and why... since I don't have a smartphone... I have no real clue, and I'm good with that.

Loved the flash! And Guri is a cookie-munching hottie.

Rebecca Gillan said...

Ok, here's a run-down of why this is so freaking funny:

Smart phones are basically pocket-sized computers. Sharing contact info with one is exactly like sharing a contact from your e-mail address book. The iPhone makes a contact listing in it's address book for the phone's user so it can easily keep track of the user's profile. And since it's an actual entry in your address book, you can share it, and many people do this rather than just texting someone their phone number.

One unfortunate side effect of this is that you are also sharing every embarrassing scrap of info your cell phone has chosen to enter about you. The new iPhone 4S takes this one step farther. It talks to you and you can tell it to call you by a nickname when it does so. So if your name is Samuel, you can have the phone call you Sam. Or you can have the phone call you something else, something more... private. And if you share your contact info, guess what's prominently displayed every time your new friend pulls up your phone number?

See? Totally hilarious!

Savanna Kougar said...

Yeah, from that aspect it is hilarious.

Serena Shay said...

LOL...Oh gawd, as teen that would be horrifying! Everything right now is horrifying to Darling Diva and we've not even officially gotten to the teen years!

Oh man, I can't even imagine some of the things I like hubster calling me in private being made public and there's not much anymore that embarrasses me! hehe

**note to me, don't get an iphone!

Great flash, Rebecca! Groov'n on the Guri love! :)