Papa-san says: LOL! BRB!

My 73-year-old dad just bought his first cellphone.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

It's a flip-phone, which means that half the time he opens it upside-down. And when he finally does get it right, he usually stares at the screen for a second or two, running through the pattern in his head to make sure he hasn't left anything out: phone rings, open phone, put phone to ear, say "hello." And he usually talks a little too loud, and sometimes his first attempts at answering the phone involve a slapstick of fumbling and grasping like an inexperienced fish-thrower down at Seattle's Pike Place. But he's learning. Yesterday I showed him how to enter contacts (it'll take a while before he's confident with those itty-bitty letters) and he recorded his first outgoing voice mail greeting.

"You've reached Coach Higa. I'm sorry, but I am unavailable to come to the phone right now, as I am either on the tennis courts or on the golf course. But if you leave a brief message and your name, I'll try to get back to you as soon as I'm done having fun. Aloha!"

I laughed and he said, "You know, I might not be doing one of those things. I just thought it was funny. Is that ok? Can I say that?"

I told him he could say whatever he wanted and agreed that it was funny. And people would sure know it was his phone they'd reached. I played the message back for him. "Is that really how my voice sounds? Doesn't sound like me. When I call you, is that how I sound?"

And I showed him how to pick a ringtone (he chose a polyphonic melody straight out of a 70s buddy cop movie), then I helped him determine a proper volume level. We had to walk a very thin line between what was audible to him and what was too loud for innocent bystanders. I think we settled on "Medium High."

I think my favorite moment was when he navigated to and called the first contact he'd entered himself. It was his buddy Smith and, after a little bit of jaunty small talk, he announced, "Well. I'm calling you on my new toy! Yes, Shar is here showing me how to use it."

There were lots of great moments. My big brother and I shared a few looks and, after he'd accidently hung up on someone as he tried to open the phone and then run out of the apartment saying "Hello? Hello. Hello?" to an empty phone line, my brother said: "You know, they make phones especially for people like him." And they do. Big buttons, few functions, easy to master and hard to mess up. But I think I rather enjoy teaching my dad how to use his new toy. And not just because of the entertainment value. If my dad, who 10 years ago decided that he'd rather buy an electric typewriter than learn how to turn on the computer, can learn the fine art of text messaging, then I feel like there's no excuse for the rest of us who sit on our butts, knowing a lot and too lazy to keep learning.

Anyway, the point of this is to tease to you all that I have some ideas about the future of this blarg. And also to share that now, when "Da Cell" calls me, this comes up on my screen: