Free The Left Behinds and the iPhone That Saved George Washington by David Potter Page B

gathered at Washington Crossing State Park to watch the festivities. There’s usually a fife and drum band, a speech by a politician or two, and then the ritual reenactment of Washington and his army crossing the Delaware in longboats.
    Then I scroll around. I have a picture of my dad, and one of my mom. Not together, of course. They haven’t been together since the divorce, and for quite some time before that as well.
    Dr. Franklin coughs. A polite cough. To let me know something.
    Which is, I’ve been staring at the picture of my mom.
    And the whole point of this was to share, wasn’t it?
    “May I see?” Dr. Franklin asks, not unkindly. He holds his hand out.
    I place the iPhone in his palm. He can see for himself how my mom is dressed. He begins to nod, as if something is starting to make sense. Daniel and Elizabeth gather behind Dr. Franklin, and, since I’ve showed them how my iPhone works, they take on the instructor’s job.
    “Press that,” Daniel says. “It’s called the home button.” Dr. Franklin presses it with a very stubby forefinger.
    My home screen. Messages, Calendar, App Store, Clock.
    “Quite ingenious,” says Dr. Franklin. “What is this device called again?”
    “An iPhone,” Elizabeth says quite proudly. It’s almost as if she owns it herself.
    “And its primary purpose?”
    “It’s a combination of things,” I say, “but first and foremost, I guess, is that it’s a phone.”
    “A phone?”
    “A telephone. You can talk to someone else who has one. Anywhere in the world.”
    “Do you mean to say that I could … converse with someone … who is not in the same room as I?”
    “Sure. You could have a live conversation with someone in a different city if you wanted, or even a different country.”
    “Hmmm. I am not so certain that is a good thing. You say ‘live conversation,’ which implies there is an opposite, namely, ‘dead’ conversation. Is your device capable of communicating with those no longer among us? I have heard of such things from those with a more mystical mind than mine.”
    “No. You can’t talk to dead people with an iPhone. That would be crazy.”
    “I see,” he says. “What provides its … its … energy?”
    “A battery.”
    “A battery?”
    “Yes. Built in.”
    “Remarkable. I daresay I did invent the battery, if not electricity. Most remarkable, young man. And how is it that … one can talk to another? Through what mechanism?”
    “Um. I’m not quite sure of that. Sound waves? Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but to tell you the truth I’m not sure how they work. This is wireless, though. Back in the old days, there was no such thing as wireless. Every phone had to have a cord to it. Which attached to the whole network, I guess.”
    “Network? What kind of network?”
    “Well, again, I don’t really know, exactly. I think anetwork is where they keep all the cords and wires and stuff. And the routers, I think that has something to do with it. My dad put a router in at our house, but it never works right.”
    “A router? What is its purpose?” Then Dr. Franklin nods at Elizabeth, and points to a piece of paper and a pen he has nearby. Elizabeth brings him not only the pen, but an inkwell. As soon as the paper is in his hands he places a book in his lap and the paper upon it, and starts taking notes.
    “Um … well, that’s a good question.”
    “But you don’t really know,” he says, peering at me over his half-spectacles. I’m glad that he isn’t my teacher, because if he were I’d be heading for an F.
    “No. Not really. I just use it.”
    “Fair enough, young man. Let’s return to these ‘sound waves’ you spoke of. What are they? Or do you not know?”
    “Well, I do know something about that. Sounds are carried along, you see. On waves.” I use my hand to show just how a wave goes. He follows my hand for a second before glancing at Daniel and Elizabeth and rolling his eyes.
    “They