dignity

I love my Blackberry for many reasons. 

I can check my email without prying hollering children off their beloved computer.  I can get instant information for the myriad random wonderings I have throughout the day.  I can make lists before I could even find my notebook and pen.  But one of my favorite reasons is this.  The ability to diagnose myself from the comfort of my own bed.

In those mad, miserable, midnight hours when we wake up itching/hurting/vomiting/cramping, and stumble to the bathroom cabinet to blinkingly stare in, what we need is information.  Because how often, really, do we have exactly the right medicine for this particular ailment?  We need something, but without information, we know that the wrong combination of bottles could kill us.  Although we may flirt with that idea, depending on how bad we feel, we don't really want to commit stupidity suicide.  And really, how do we even know what we're treating for? 

You know what we really need right now?  Friendly, brightly-colored, accommodating Google.  But slipping downstairs in our jammies to turn on the computer, to sit in a house completely dark except for the monitor's blue-white glow, sounds a little like neurosis.  And what if somebody came looking for us, and found us sitting there, our eyes slightly bugged out, fingernail between our teeth?  What would we say then? "Uh...research...?"  Right.

But a Blackberry is an entirely different story.  It's right there on our bedside table.  Because among other things, it's an alarm clock, of course.  How easy, how completely unobtrusive to just hang an arm over the side of the bed so the backlight doesn't wake aaaaaanybody up, and type in "poison ivy milk of magnesia"?  Or "arm asleep heart attack"  Or "headache likely brain tumor"?

It's a closet hypochondriac's dream. 

Because it's only a neurosis if somebody else finds out about it, right? What did people do before modern technology came along to help us preserve our dignity?

~MB~