When I was a little kid and I went places on vacation, I used to imagine that I had a miniature walkie-talkie device that would fit in the palm of my hand and that I could carry everywhere and it would connect me with my best friend at home. Back then, for the average 7-year-old, a device like this was more or less fiction, a product of my overactive imagination, but so were the reasons I might need to stay in constant touch with my best friend in the first place: usually some variation on the theme of my being an International spy.

The device I used to imagine back then, today is called my cell phone. I no longer need to use my imagination to conjure one up in my mind. Incidentally, just for the record, I also no longer imagine myself as a spy, traveling the world, embarking on dangerous and complicated espionage missions. But if I did, would it matter? Wouldn't that certainly make things more interesting? Somewhere along the line, reality has stepped in. It has made my cell phone boring and common place. And it has gotten in the way of all that free-form imagination that used to make the everyday seem exciting. Being in sync with the reality of things is a necessary part of growth, I suppose, but it's also kind of sad.

What's also sad is that today, while I have the exact kind of walkie-talkie device I used to imagine, while I'm one button away from the exact same friend of mine from 25 years ago, I only speak to him about twice a year.

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