What Age Were You When You Had Your First Handphone?

I was chatting with a young lady recently when we were interrupted by a little boy of about 6 or 7.

Young lady of 21: Ah..the innocence of childhood...

Me, a.k.a. Matured lady double her age plus 4: Oh, but he knows more than you at 6, and you knew more than I at age 6.

Young lady: Yeah, generation gap.

Older lady: Err...I think we're talking about technological advancement, or how the advances of technology have made us smarter younger. Or how technology has stolen our innocence.....(mumbling in her cups)

Young lady: ??? (quickly excusing herself, leaves the company of older lady for more coherent conversationalists)

No, I was exaggerating. We went on to compare notes on the age we were when we were first exposed to the mobile handphone. Not the brick-like clunky Motorola handphone you could use to bash in the heads of people who annoy you - the one that cost quite an arm and a leg, which only rich businessmen could afford.

The Motorola DynaTac 8000X

So then, my question of the day was: "What age were you when you had your first handphone?" And for people below 35 the question reads: "What age were you when you were exposed to the handphone?"

My young lady of 21 said: 12. It was my parents' handphones. I played with their handphones when they were not looking.

And as I continued my impromptu survey and asked younger respondents, I find as answer: "Duh! Since I was born! I could play with my parents' phones even before I learned to read."

I am reminded of the different warnings I have gotten from different parents of different little children with the passing of the years:

1985
"Oy! Don't let him play with your handphone. He might drop it."
Of course the child did not drop the handphone.

1995
"Eh! Don't let him play with your handphone. Look! He's pressing the buttons, he might be accidentally calling from your phone."
The child had opened up the games app and was playing games on my handphone.

2005
"Aargh! He's taking pictures with your handphone. How they figure out every new handphone without even reading the owner's manual, I'll never know." (Read as: Gosh! My son's quite a techie whiz. Where did he get it?)
But they all are. If you can't find a particular feature in your new handphone and are too lazy to read the owner's manual, pass it to a child and ask him to locate it for you and he would.

2010
"Oh no, is your handphone 3G? Don't give it to my son, he'll go online."
The child in question is only 6 years old and yes, he has gone online, he's on Facebook, he's just posted the picture he took with my handphone and he's going on YouTube to post the video of all our legs under the table.

Another friend told me that he recently had a mortifying moment when a little girl of 4 asked him in the piping voice of the very young, "Uncle, why is your phone green?" My baby-boomer friend (he's in his 50s) is of the generation of "if it ain't broke, why change it?" creed, so he's still using the good old Nokia 3210 - no color screen, when a handphone is just a phone and not a camera, videocamera, GPS tracker, hand-held computer and could do most everything except vacuum your house and wash your clothes.

Link: Knucklehead!: iPhone Idleness