Garth and telephones

The Wednesday before Christmas, Heath checked something off his bucket list (...if he had a bucket list. He doesn't, but if he did, this would be on it). He has always said he wanted to see Garth Brooks in concert. "He's a legend," he would say. "He's done more for country music than anyone else." And it happened.

We were able to get eight tickets to see him at his last show. My sister, brother-in-law, aunt, two cousins, Heath's sister and the two of us fought the crowds (and had an awesome time doing it) to get into Bridgestone Arena to hear the best country music from the 90's.

Heath and I waiting to go inside.

That's me with my aunt Kathy and two cousins, Jeremiah and Josh. Between the crowds going in, the wait before the concert, the concert itself, and the walk back to the car ... we really had too much fun. :)

I sang every word to every song (sometimes holding my imaginary microphone), screamed for more when he left the stage, and left knowing I'd seen the best concert I will ever see.

The best concert...ever.

It left me thinking though about the effects of modern technology. Cash's favorite thing to watch right now are some old Mickey cartoons that we borrowed from the library. One cartoon includes an old telephone. You know, the one that you hold one part to your ear to listen, and with the other hand, you hold the second part to your mouth to speak? Yeah, that kind of old telephone. He asked me, "What that?" the first time we watched it. I replied, "That's a telephone." And his reply, "No it not, mama." He pointed to my cell phone on the arm of the couch. "That's phone."

Wow. I kept thinking about phones as I sort of watched a black and white Mickey skip rope over the cord of the old telephone. Cash doesn't know any other phone except a cell phone. Crazy. Cell phones have seriously taken over the "phone" image in this next generation's mind. We don't have a house phone, so even a cordless phone was just something that he played with a my parents' house.

That brings us back to Garth. My second favorite Garth song (we won't discuss my favoritest song, since Heath says it's the most immoral song he sings) is Callin' Baton Rouge. You know it, right? Well, for all you non-Garth fans, it tells of a guy "out on the highway" that was "stoppin every hundred miles" to call Baton Rouge. (There's a girl there, of course.) But think of what the cell phone has done to this song. If this guy had a cell phone (which I'm sure he didn't back in 1993** when Garth recorded it) he wouldn't have to stop with his "couple dollars change" to talk to "Samantha." See?

**They especially didn't have cell phones back in 1978 when this song was originally recorded by the Oak Ridge Boys ... what you can learn from a google search.

Another song that comes to mind is Travis Tritt's Here's a Quarter. Most people, again, have cell phones, and they wouldn't need to find a pay phone. Do they even have pay phones anymore? If so, I'm pretty sure they would cost more than a quarter (inflation).

All in all, the songs are still great, especially Garth's Callin' Baton Rouge (which he did sing that night). Cell phones coming into the picture doesn't ruin the song for me, but I'm sure one day Cash will ask the question, "Why doesn't he just use his cell phone?" And I'll be more than happy to explain it all to my lil' man...