“In spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of wearing out his thumbs on the keyboard.” – with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Late last autumn I finally upgraded to a smartphone. Although some of my relatives still cling to older communications devices (“That pharmacy would get a lot more of my business if they skipped all this high-tech folderol and learned the virtues of tin cans and a really long string…”), I am like a hog feeding at the trough of apps.
I just wish there were more apps designed specifically to help us navigate the trials and tribulations of springtime. Attention, software developers! Here are some apps we really, really need:
1. A variation of the venerable cellphone flashlight. This one would use advanced algorithms to produce just the right wavelengths of light to counteract the glare from pale, white wintertime skin that is suddenly being exposed again.
2. A comical graphics app that portrays Mother Nature as a stereotypical cat. (“I think I’ll make it hot…I think I’ll make it cold…I think I’ll make it hot…I think I’ll make it cold…Oh, have some hairballs the tornado dragged in…”)
3. An app that notifies your local undertaker that you can now die happy because you’ve cut your lawn 1/16 of an inch shorter than that &^%$# at the end of the street.
4. An app that scans a saliva sample and searches an international database until it finds the obscure Achilles heel of all your friends and acquaintances who suffer no ill effects from snorting pollen like it’s cocaine. (“Oh, you gave me an albino duck-billed platypus spleen sample for my centerpiece. You shouldn’t have. You really shouldn’t have. Throat constricting …can’t breathe…”)
5. Hijacking the same sentiment, an app that summons a convertible by remote control — and sends it crashing through the front door of the Big Pharma execs who turn out all those ineffectual over-the-counter antihistamines, decongestants and cough remedies!
6. An unflinching app that compares Asian education to the last couple of months of the American school year, with all the movies, “wander around outside” days and “Dress up like all those old fogeys from 2009 who knew Abe Lincoln personally” days.
7. An app to forecast the exact date of your first catastrophic flip-flop incident of the season (and the likelihood of the ER attendants being in a committed relationship).
8. An app to make up cheerful “happily ever after” stories about all those adorable bunnies and chicks who were forgotten after the last Easter candy was gobbled down.
9. An app to send a false alarm and save you from buckling down and doing that dreaded Spring Cleaning. Don’t settle for something mundane like a nuclear missile headed for Hawaii. You could have a bulletin like “The Titanic has suddenly risen and is on a collision course with Ohio! Forget cleaning out the garage!”
If anyone has already designed one of the aforementioned apps, please let me know so credit can be given.
I’ll even give you another assignment: design an app to produce enough white noise to drown out the people who grouse, “Stop staring at that screen and admire all the weeds and bugs around you! Dadgum it, get me the string and the can for the newspaper editor so I can give this generation a piece of my mind!”
Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.” Danny’s weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate.
