BlackBerry Thumb and Hairy Palms

Several months ago, I had to stand on a crowded bus. I found myself standing behind a seated man huddled in the corner, playing with his BlackBerry. With its colorful, large screen and bright backlighting, I couldn’t help but notice the images. He was surfing porn. On his BlackBerry. On the bus. A crowded bus. One thumb was obviously on the device itself, but I glanced to see where the other hand was (it was clutching his briefcase). Oblivious to my amusement (and others’), he continued to view hardcore material and stories before I exited at my stop.

I somehow doubt that food was on his mind when he stepped into his home that evening. And although my BlackBerry comes in handy for travel (“I am on a crowded plane—can you hear me now? NOW CAN YOU HEAR ME?”) and for reserving a spot at a Gypsy dinner, I felt like it should be more rewarding for me since, after all, the office wants me to be accessible 24/7. This is when I realized the potential of placing all my recipes online so I could look up ingredients from the grocery, check a recipe that I am trying to do from memory, run a pantry check, but most of all, not have to use the archaic search engine of the New York Times. (A big Special Ed cheer on that!) But then again, if you have ever had your DSL go down, or tried to retrieve a recipe from Cooks when its service is offline, you’ll know that a recipe in hand is worth 15,000 links online.