8

I’m useless?  Don’t say that.  There’s got to be something I’m useful for.  As the expression goes, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day”.   That’s outdated too?   How do people tell time, then?   Digital, on their phones and watches?   Bet they still have analog watch faces.  Iwatch.  Yeah, I guess this is Iwatch or my watch as they’d say in my time.   I is for apple?   “What you talking about, Willis?”  You don’t remember that show?   Anyway, my friends be telling me Microsoft and IBM be putting Macs out of business any day now and the only reason Mac don’t go under is IBM and Microsoft paying Mac to stay in business so Uncle Sam (EU) won’t sue IBM and Microsoft for running a monopoly and not the board game.  

      How come you say a broken clock won’t be right twice . . . ‘Cause it ain’t never 18:88?   What clock be saying 18:88.  A digital.  Look, somebody must have something to put inside me, like Bob Seger, put a Seger album in me.  You don’t.  Ain’t nobody own shit for me no more?   Why not?   Ain’t there no more nostalgics in the world?   Next thing you know, you’re gonna tell me they discontinued the “Atari 2300,” and there ain’t no more floppy discs.  

       They did?   There aren’t?   What?  People stop having fun?   They just be slaving on work day and night?   Advanced technology?   More advanced than an Atari?   Ain’t nobody floppy disc going to fit into me, but . . .   A flash drive?   You mean a hard drive?   People don’t like that I ain’t got Bluetooth?   Them there morons ought to go to a dentist if they got Bluetooth or maybe quit eating candy with food coloring.  It uses WIFI and I ain’t got WiFi or Bluetooth?  I know what why means, but ain’t never heard of Fi.  

    Wait . . . I know what you talking about.  Fi is fiction like Sci Fi.  You be talking about why people read fiction?   No.   The web?   Where be the web?   Everywhere?   Damn it.  Gotta call the exterminator again.  If there be webs, there be spiders and some damn spiders be poisonous.   Not that kind of web.  What other kind of web there be?   World Wide Web?  Spiders must have come from New York City, like dog sized rats if the web be around the whole wide world.  

    I ain’t obsolete.   Why you say that?   Sure, go to any store that sells 33 1/3s, 45s, 78s, and you’ll find 8-tracks.   No, those aren’t the calibers for guns, those are records.  

    Look, just plug me in, you morons still use plugs, right?   Good.  Put an 8-track in me and enjoy the music.   I play new stuff, old stuff.   Pandora?   What you talking about?   Sure, I be old, but Pandora’s Box be from old Greek writing.  Like “The Iliad,” or “Oedipus,” or something.   Website?  

     Look, go in the garage, there be a flyswatter and a spray bottle.   We be getting rid of all these spiders.  Even if we gotta call an exterminator, we be getting rid of them.  What you mean I ain’t be understanding?  Arachnoids.   You be talking about arachnoids.   Not insects like ants, bees, you be talking about spiders.  Those damn arachnoids be screwing up my insides if they be getting inside of me.  Hot damn.  

     Look, things go out of fashion, but then they come back into fashion.  Take bananas.   At one point, Americans said they didn’t want bananas, because it reminded them of penises.  Then, these women danced with baskets with fruit on their heads and bananas are now sold everywhere.  Well, at least yellow bananas. 

    And you think I’m useless?  I’m telling you, people are going to start groups at the colleges and everybody’s going to be using me.   Meet-ups, group, same thing. An app?   You mean an amp, like amplifier, right?   A phone is something you buy at a store, plug into the wall.  No, I don’t know why you keep saying iPhone.  Take it with you?   No, that’s what answering machines, pagers, and pay phones are for.  what am I talking about?   All the cool kids have pagers.   You wear it on your belt, it vibrates or beeps if someone wants you, they type their number in.  Texting?  Never heard of it.  

     Email?   No.  Mail is something you either write on Microsoft Works or Word, print out, put in an envelope.   They don’t do that anymore.  What year is it.  It’s 1982.  It’s not?   Ok, smartallic, what year do you think it is?  You been smoking some grass or what?  Next thing you be telling me is smellivision replaced television, they’ve started cloning people, or they’ve colonized planets.  

     Look, somebody in the world wants an 8-track player.  With roughly 8 billion people on planet Earth, somebody’s gotta love me.  You could take me to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or sell me on eBay?   What’s eBay?  You mean a garage sale?   Online?  What’s on a line.  You mean a clothes line?   You know? You wash your clothes in a tub with a washboard, put it through a laundry roller, and hang it online.  

    Ok, what do YOU think it means to be online?   Amazon?   Ain’t that a rainforest in Africa?   .com?   Did a country called .com recolonize Africa?   You’re right, I don’t know what the hell you be talking about.  What?   There are echos in the Amazon?   Could be, I never thought about it before.  Talk to an echo, right, and it’ll talk back.   Ha ha.  Not that kinda .

     Kids these days, don’t understand.   When I was your age, I learned to listen and listened to learn.  You still read books, right?   A kindle.  No, man, that’s what you use to start a fire in the fireplace.   They still got fireplaces, right?  

     What the?   Your watch be ringing?   What you a spy or something?  Everyone be having watches that ring.  Again, I want white teeth, not blue teeth.  

     House run by electronics?   What you be watching too many Jetsins cartoons at the movie theatre.   You know?   The shorts before the movies.  They still got movie theatres, right?  

      Look, it be 1982 and this writer of this here story be a moron who need to study American Media history.  What he be talking about?  You think there be cartoon shorts at the movies in 1982?   Hell no.  Hell, us 8-track players stop being popular way before that, but someone, somewhere must know about me and want me.  Maybe look it up in a library book, “The History of Technology in America,” or “What the Fuck is an 8-Track and Who the Fuck Cares”?   Or maybe find out when there were cartoon shorts before movies.  It sure wasn’t 1982.   Or maybe you just looking to escape into a story and don’t give a fuck about real or not?   Hell, no one gonna read this story anyway and ain’t no one own no 8-track player no more.