Reality Check

One of the great things about being a late adopter of technology is that by the time you get around to using it, it’s pretty much all sorted out. The teething glitches, the navigational issues the hardware problems and software tricks…all already solved by the time you press the on button.

            “Can you imagine if we’d been the first to buy that exploding Samsung phone?” Saffy said the other day as she opened the box for her new iPhone X. She radiated smug superiority.

            On the other side of the couch, Amanda watched the unwrapping ceremony. “The best thing about buying an Apple product is opening the packaging. It’s so beautiful!”

            With both hands, Saffy carefully lifted her gleaming black phone out of its white cocoon. She held it with the kind of reverence you normally associate with the Virgin Mary presenting the infant Jesus to the magi. “It’s gorgeous!” she breathed.

            “Such a pretty colour, too!” Amanda said.

            “And now, I can stalk Garrett Swann on Instagram in hi-def colour!” Saffy announced.

            Amanda sniffed. “Garrett Swann? You’re still following that pasty white fur-ball?”

            Saffy paused and looked up. “Why? Who are you stalking?”

            “Tmski!” Amanda replied without hesitation.

            “Who’s that?”

            “Prince Mateen of Brunei! He’s hot! And he’s rich!” said Amanda with the kind of confidence that can only come from someone who’s also hot and rich. She scrolled through her phone and shoved the screen in Saffy’s direction.

            Saffy scrutinized the images. “Hmmm,” she said eventually. “Yes, he’s cute, but what is he, fifteen years old?”          

            “He’s at least in his twenties!” Amanda said.

            “He looks like he’s ten!” Saffy insisted.

            Later at lunch with Barney Chen and his best hag Leena, I said it was so weird how Instagram makes us all feel like we’re bosom buddies with complete strangers.

            “It’s like how I follow Naomi Campbell?” I said. “She wouldn’t know me if she walked over me in her stilettos, but I can tell you exactly where she went last night and what she was wearing! Isn’t that weird?”

            “That’s cause you’re new to all this,” Barney said in his rumbling basso, his voice like a row of Rolls-Royce doors all closing at the same time. “It’s intoxicating in the beginning. The first time I started following Cindy Crawford, I felt like I’d grown up in her kitchen with her gorgeous husband and children! But none of it is real!” he added. “Don’t fall for it! Am I right, Leena?”

             Leena nodded sagely. She put her fork down. Turns out that after she gave birth to her daughter, she spent a lot of time in bed feeling very depressed and alone.

“Everyone said, ‘Oh you must be feeling so happy now that you have a baby! You’ve been trying to have Emma for so long!’ And yet, you know,” she said, leaning in, “I was so horribly depressed. It was probably a little bit of post-partum, but I think a lot of it also had to do with Facebook and Instagram. Everyone on it seemed to be having such a fabulous life. Great parties, great beach holidays, amazing meals, fun friends…And here I was stuck in bed all day with a baby that if she wasn’t latched onto my breast with her sharp teeth, she was screaming!”

I frowned at the image.

            “This is what happens when you have children!” Barney said, placing a giant paw over Leena’s hand. “I did warn you!”

            “You also warned me not to buy Facebook shares!” Leena said tartly.

            Barney shrugged.

            “Let me tell you though,” Leena went on. “You can have 600 friends on Facebook and 100,000 followers on Instagram, but do you know who shows up at your doorstep at three in the morning with a tub of your favourite ice-cream and holds you while you cry because your baby won’t stop crying? This guy, that’s who.”

            Barney turned pink and waved his massive steak-like hands. “I am your floor!” he rumbled.

            Leena and I exchanged glances. “What?” I said.

            “I am her floor!” he repeated as he turned to Leena. “I am your floor. If you ever fall, I will be there!”
            When I got home and repeated this to Amanda, she sighed deeply. “Oh my God, that is so incredibly beautiful!”

            Saffy’s bosom inflated. “Really? You think?”

            “That’s what you guys are to me!” Amanda said, her eyes turning dewy. “You’re my floor!”

            “Ay, you know, ah,” Sharyn said, “floor very dirty, one, ok? Must every day mop, one! Why must be floor, hah?”

            “You kill me, Shazz!” Saffy told her.