Kids all over the Eastside are busy this weekend getting their Halloween duds ready. They’ll soon be gussied up in the usual devil outfits, pirate get-ups and princess dresses.
Super hero costumes are selling briskly this year. Gadhafi costumes, not so much.
Last year, a trick-or-treater showed up at our door dressed as Abraham Lincoln. When I threw the door open, he said, “Trick or Treat, my fellow American!”
I handed the kid a Snickers bar. It was the smaller version labeled as the so-called “Fun Size.” As he was leaving the porch, I overheard young Lincoln making a quick call on his cell phone. It went like this:
“Hey, it’s me. Don’t bother with the Cashman house. They’re giving out dinky, crummy, little candy bars. Waste of time.”
I was struck not only by his blunt assessment of our offering, but how quickly he was able to spread the word. I wanted to point out to him that – to be historically accurate – Lincoln never used a cell phone. Coincidence or not, we didn’t get another trick-or-treater all night.
This year, trick-or-treaters who stop our place by will receive year-old “Fun Size” Snickers.
It’s not a bombshell observation, but cell phones have made the world a vastly different place than the one many of us grew up in. You can readily see it in older movies, where cell phones and laptops – if they had existed – would have changed entire storylines.
Dorothy could have just made a long-distance call from the Land of Oz back to Kansas and kept Auntie Em from worrying so much.
Things in the jungle would have been a lot easier for Tarzan if he had one of those Android phones – although it’s unclear where he would have carried it.
Just think about your favorite old movies and how different the big scenes and famous dialogue might have been if today’s technology had been around.
Sunset Boulevard: “I am big. It’s the phones that got small.”
Citizen Kane: “Ear-bud.”
Apollo 13: “Houston, we have a problem with our Blackberries.”
Love Story: “Love means never having to email you’re sorry.”
E.T.: “E.T. – Skype home.”
Planet of the Apes: “Take your stinking paws off my iPhone, you damn dirty ape!”
Gone With the Wind: “Frankly, my dear, IDGAD!”
Shane: “Shane! Shane! Text back!”
Knute Rockne, All American: “Tweet ‘em to go out there and win one for the Gipper.”
And, of course:
Casablanca: “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. On Facebook.”
Pat Cashman can be reached at pat@patcashman.com.
