Wake-Up Calls

So I’m minding my own business, getting ready for bed, when the smartphone makes the most God-awful sound I’ve ever heard. It’s an alert tone, and the phone vibrates, too. I thought, earthquake? Tsunami? Al Qaeda? No, it was an Amber Alert, coming from a town more than 500 miles away, about a suspected child kidnapping.

Now I am all in favor, of course, of rescuing children and bringing kidnappers to justice. But do I want to be jolted into a heart condition by what amounts to a “be on the lookout” advisory? Such warnings should be limited to threats that could affect my or my neighbors; or community’s immediate safety, IMHO.

Fortunately, I can turn the Amber Alerts off on my phone (not that easy a task!). I also learned that there are several gradations of alerts – vaguely reminiscent of the Bush administration’s infamous color-coding system to warn us of a terrorist attack. I believe many institutions, and even a country or two, still use this kind of scheme. They also seem to agree that red is a bad thing – no political statement intended.

But the smart phone’s gradations include "Severe" alert. The next highest one up is "Extreme" alert, though I can’t for the life of me decide what the heck’s the difference between those two. Then there’s the "Presidential" alert. That one is apparently mandatory – the phone won’t allow me to turn it off.  I guess if we get one of those, we’re in really deep doo-doo.

My phone is special. It can display a little icon of seven guys in white robes with wings, all blowing trumpets. That really is Game Over. I wonder what that’s going to sound like. Trumpets, probably. But I’m sure when that event comes along, I won’t need the smartphone to play that sound – it will come from another source. Guess it will be OK to set the phone to “vibrate.”