A Glitch In The Matrix: I Saw A Modern Smart Phone On A Streetcar In 1996
A Glitch In The Matrix: I Saw A Modern Smart Phone On A Streetcar In 1996
“You can have the TV from the basement.” My dad says.
It is spring of 1997. I am moving out of my parent’s home.
I rented a bachelorette off of Queen Street in downtown Toronto. A five minute walk from the Big Bop Concert Hall. I left $400 for first month’s rent and the mandatory $200 just in case you trash the place deposit. A whopping $600 in total. But hey, big city, big prices.
“I don’t want a big TV. I want one of those small flat ones I can carry with me and watch on long subway rides.”
My campus was in Mississauga. A twenty minute walk from my parent’s house. It actually made no sense for me to live in Toronto. But I wanted at the world. And I couldn’t be me in the constricted confines of my parent’s space anymore.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” My dad says.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Surely you have seen them. They are like the size of your hand and flat.”
“I don’t know what exactly you are imagining. Sure there are small TVs, but they suck batteries faster than you buy them, and the antenna is not good for picking up signals on subways. Also I don’t even know where to get them. I have never been interested in small TVs. Why have a useless small one when you can have a proper big one?”
“Because I don’t need a big extravagant one! I want one on the go! How can they take many batteries if they are so small?”
My dad shook his head, “I think you are imagining something that doesn’t exist.”
This frustrated me. How could my dad, a self taught techie, who subscribed to four techie magazines including PCWorld, not know what I am talking about?
Seven years prior a friend gave my dad an old computer. My dad obsessed over it and spent nights learning how to use it. Me and my mom felt embarrassed watching my dad call his friend every twenty minutes for days on end asking questions: How to this, how to that.
But he figured out the computer. He figured out how to use graphics software. He edited our pictures and stored them on discs. Then he got into video editing. Then he started to build his own computers.
“No Tata, I didn’t see it in a movie! There was a guy on the streetcar! Right before Christmas! The Queen streetcar! I sat next to him. He was watching a movie on one. His TV was perfect for me.”
“Then maybe you should find someone who has one, and ask them. I don’t know where to get such a thing.”
“Fine I’ll find one myself since you don’t know anything.”
Yes, Small Tvs Existed In 1996. But They Are Not What I Saw
The first small hand held TV was released by Panasonic in 1970. It looked like this:
In 1982 Sony released the Watchman. Sony manufactured 65 models of Watchman before their discontinuation in 2000.
How Good Were The Watchmen?
Some comments from a Reddit thread about the Sony Watchman:
No one is gonna talk about how many batteries this fucker burned through?
I mean it was super cool and novel at the time but the reality was that this thing SUCKED. It was so hard to get reception and the screen was so tiny and it was half static and the angle of the screen was weird.
Had one as a pre-teen used to watch ‘Friends’ in black and white at 1am when I was supposed to be sleeping. 10/10 would childhood again.
A 1985 model of the Sony Watchman ((FD-40A) appeared in the 1988 film Rain Man. Blogger Hawk Gate in his piece, The Fakest Parts of “Rain Man” writes:
The Watchman is a portable, battery powered TV. Charlie buys one while they’re on the road because Ray likes to watch “People’s Court” and “Jeopardy” every day.
Ray’s Watchman has magical powers. It gets great reception while they’re driving through a small town. It gets great reception while they’re driving through a barren desert. It even gets great reception inside an elevator in Vegas.
My dad had a Watchman in the 80’s. We lived within five miles of several TV stations. To pick up any signal at all on the Watchman, you had to stand perfectly still and fiddle with the antenna until you got it just right. Once a clear picture came in, you couldn’t move a muscle. And you would never get reception in a moving car or an elevator.
It’s nice that Ray is able to watch Judge Wapner and “Jeopardy,” but the superb TV signal he gets on the Watchman is probably the most unrealistic aspect of the entire movie.
So it seems that my dad was right about small portable TVs not being efficient for travel. It doesn’t matter, as none of these were what I saw.
I Went To Future Shop
I went to the Future Shop on Yonge Street. It was the most popular home electronics store in Canada.
I wandered about. There were no customers in the store. I couldn’t find any small TVs. A salesman asked me if he can help me find anything.
“I am looking for a small TV I can carry around,” I said.
The salesman pointed me to a Sony TV/VCR combo. It looked like this:
It cost $499.99
“No, I am looking for a small flat one I can carry in my hand.”
The salesman shrugged and said, “this is the smallest TV I have.”
“Do you know where I can find one of the small flat ones?”
He shook his head.
I wondered around downtown Toronto and checked other electronics stores. No luck. Frustrated I returned to Future Shop.
“Okay, I’ll buy this one, but I need a Future Shop card.”
He gave me a credit application. I filled it out and got approved for $1000 of credit. He handed me a temporary paper credit card. I signed it and bought the TV.
I sat the TV/VCR combo on my desk beside my bed in my new apartment. It worked fine. But I resented having to accept this crude technology. I wanted the small flat TV the guy on the streetcar had.
The little combo unit served me well though. I watched old Van Dame movies I recorded on tapes years ago. The antenna picked up a few channels. Canadian channels loved broadcasting Planet of the Apes movies late at night. I sort of got into them.
In 2001 Future Shop got bought out by Best Buy. In 2015 Best Buy dissolved the Future Shop brand and closed down 66 locations. The rest were converted into Best Buys. I guess the Future Shop wasn’t a future shop after all.
2023 Streetcar Déjà Vu
Living in the big city was fun at first. But soon I felt suffocated. I missed biking through the woods. I grew tired of waiting for streetcars. Sometimes the traffic on Queen was so bad it made more sense to walk, even in the snow. Often you couldn’t find a seat. Some cars were old, smelly, and loud. Once in a while you got a fancy new one.
Five years later I moved back to Mississauga. I bought a car. I continued to organize events and recreate in Toronto for another few years, but I drove. Eventually I ended all my Toronto projects and stopped going there entirely. I had no need to suffer streetcars after that.
Fast forward twenty something years to late 2023.
My laptop broke. I always went to my dad with this sort of thing. But in 2022 he had a stroke. His left hand cannot hold tools. So I called up an old friend who fixes stuff. Derek lives right in the middle of Toronto. “If you want it fixed, you have to come to me!” He said.
“Well of course!” I said.
Toronto is congested. Plus I haven’t parallel parked in years. “Maybe I’ll take a train and a streetcar,” I thought. “Why not? Maybe I’ll walk around my old stomping grounds and see how the city changed.”
I rode the subway into the city. I walked around. The Big Bop Concert Hall is no longer there. Just some store. Everything is different. It is as if it was never there. How could it just be gone? Wasn’t I just there? Where did the time go?
I got on a streetcar. It looked new. I sat next to a guy in a black hoodie. He had dark moppy hair. He was watching a movie on his smart phone. And this is when it happened. A moment of recognition:
I have been here before. I have seen this before. 1996. This is the guy with the hand held TV.
I felt a chill and then heat. I looked down at my phone. It was a flat TV just like his. Then it was my stop. I looked at the man as I walked off the streetcar. He continued to watch his movie. Perhaps for infinity and across dimensions.
Did I See A Modern Smart Phone In 1996?
In 1996 I had a pager. In my apartment I hooked up a landline. I got my first cell phone in 1998. It was a Nokia. It looked like this:
The modern flat screen smart phone didn’t appear until 2007.
So What Did I See In 1996?
Did I step into a time warp? Did I step into 2023? Was the guy on the bus time lost? Or am I remembering wrong?
Spring 2024 I Ask My Dad If He Remembers
“Do you remember me telling you how I want a hand held TV back when I was moving out the first time?”
“Yes. I remember. I figured you seen it in a movie.”
“No there was really a guy on a streetcar with one. I know what I saw.”
My dad smirks and points at my LG Velvet. “You now have what you wanted.”
I look down at my LG Velvet. My apps look up at me. “Yes.” I smile. “It really is a very good little TV.”
Are You Afraid?
In this age of science, many people fear looking “irrational.” Being “logical” is lauded. Contemplating exceptional explanations gets you the side eye. People may view you as naïve, gullible, or dumb and impressionable, or even mentally unstable.
A person deemed mentally unstable is regarded as unsuitable to lead or be trusted. The unfortunate stigma regarding mental illness attests to this. It is ostracizing. And by nature we fear this ostracization. We want to conform to the standard that keeps us looking trustable.
Often we internalize the social standard. This makes us quick to point out unconforming thinking or behavior in others. By pointing it out, we showcase our trustability to others and fortify our view of ourselves as sane and worthy.
But by dismissing any thinking out of fear of appearing irrational, either in front of others, or before ourselves, we deprive ourselves of thinking tangents that may awaken new paths of thinking and understanding.
The most remarkable thing to me about the streetcar incident is the feeling it evoked in me. How I sat in my room disappointed about my crude primitive equipment. It may be argued that I didn’t see what I thought I saw. But this feeling was real. It indicated to me that there is something different possible. The feeling evoked thoughts in me. It inspired this piece and these thoughts I am conveying to you.
If you scroll the internet you see how hungry people are for conspiracies. Deep down people want to think wildly.
Here is the thing: We don’t need to commit to any explanation. So why not speculate wildly? By doing this you may discover new things about your mind, or perhaps reality. And won’t it be something if we find something strange about the world together?
Explanations can always be ruled out later. The experience of having imagined the exceptional is enriching. It is better to speculate wildly first, then debunk later. Imagine all the things that would have never happened if everyone adhered to the thinking norm of the time.
Check out this 60 second video on why you need to think wildly: https://youtube.com/shorts/lddzQSwKrp4?si=rndRWlzopRrAvH8M
A Glitch In The Matrix Series
I have had many little odd experiences throughout my life. I think most of us have them. This is the first story in a series.
Have you had an odd strange experience that made you go “hmmm?” Leave me a comment.
Thank you for being here.
Karina - my favorite handheld tv from those times was this little beauty : https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/casio_color_lcd_tv_tv_7500.html - which actually worked pretty well - I thought I might still have it - but after some hours now of looking in places not looked in for a very long time, I have to conclude that it - like so many other peripheral things in my life - simply got lost en route, never to be seen again - which is a shame - but your memory would not necessarily be that far wrong ! Even way further back in the early 80's I had a small tv monitor that was all hooked up to a VHS video player *in my car* !! I actually used that car (a lovely gold colored Range Rover ) touring with a rock and roll band around Europe (we actually supported David Bowie over a series of European shows in 1983 as part of that tour !) - and the video player was great for keeping everyone quiet on long trips. Everything was wonderful with the set-up, until we got back to London, and within 24 hours, some nice local had broken in to the car and stolen the video player - typical !!! Happy days remembered - although as I am finding out, the memories I recall are not always accurate to the reality of the time, but hey we are allowed to remember things the way we want to are we not ? And such is one way of reading your story here !!
Check out an Australian podcast called Mysterious Universe. Stuff like what you experienced happens more often than you’d think.