Slightly Daunted Courage

So there we were, Lesley and I, smack in the middle of Kansas, when the Smartphone Wars began. (And let me tell you, there's nothing more middle than Kansas. It's about the most middle-est place one can imagine. It's even more middling than Nebraska, if that's possible.) Anyway, as we headed back from Dallas after a wonderful visit with Amy and Karl, our two phones began to squabble with one another.

I have an iPhone 5s, while Lesley has a Galaxy S5. As you would expect, these similarly named iOS and Android devices have the occasional spat, but this time it got out of hand.
 

The amazing story of the Lewis and
Clark expedition.

I was speaking with Siri (she gets me) about something, I forget what, when the Galaxy, which at the time was supposed to be giving driving directions and robotically humming to itself, apparently started listening to me asking Siri a question. "The Google Lady," as we call her, decided that she should participate in what had heretofore been a private conversation between Siri and myself. I must have said "Google" or some other magic word (Amazon? NSA?) that Lesley's phone picked up on, and suddenly it was a three-way conversation—four-way, once Lesley joined in.

In no time at all, both phones got totally confused, with Siri and The Google Lady spewing digital insults at one another and answering questions that neither Lesley nor I had meant to pose, with random back-chatter going on and our two devices talking smack, and God only knows what all was going to happen next. At one point, Lesley's phone decided to play hardball and began spewing Eminem at us, which I thought was very cruel and totally uncalled for. There seemed to be no way to get the Galaxy to stop playing Eminem short of throwing the phone out the car window, which I seriously considered doing. (It was Eminem, after all.)

Now, I bring this up because as we were driving to Texas and back (the return trip lasted approximately 327 hours) it dawned on me that we were carrying an awful lot of technology with us. There we were, skirting portions of both The Oregon Trail and Lewis and Clark's route to the Pacific, and I kinda wanted to feel like a rough, self-sufficient explorer-type, ready to scale mountain ranges and cross the prairies using just my wits -- and perhaps a tin cup and a sheath knife. But we had in the car with us the two aforementioned smart phones (and I'm using the term "smart" very loosely here), two laptop computers, several converters and inverters, a Samsung Galaxy Tab Nook, and an iPad. (Not to mention the car itself, which is one of those newfangled contraptions with an onboard computer, but no carburetor and with the engine squeezed in sideways. I honestly don't see how the damned thing runs at all.) Lewis and Clark, meanwhile, actually carried quite a lot of stuff that was supposed to be useful, including a clock that turned out not to work very well, an air rifle that kept randomly shooting passers-by, and a folding boat that failed at every opportunity and to which the men began referring derisively as "the experiment." (The explorers also brought along some very harsh purgatives, which I imagine did work well, but I don't want to think about that.)

It was a memorable Thanksgiving, and wonderful to see "the kids," but from now on I will endeavor to stay out of spats between rival operating systems. I mean, Eminem! That's going pretty far. Who knows what The Google Lady might have started playing next! Kenny G.? Neil Diamond?! Honestly, the thought is terrifying.