Amish Wizard

[lb_lee]

Some smartphone door-to-door salesmen were going around my neighborhood a few days ago, but they made the terrible mistake of getting me at the door, and I easily banished them with the words, "I don't have a smartphone."

Later that day, as I was hauling my laundry for washing, I encountered the salesman again, along with their colleague, both of whom looked to be young, in their early twenties. The one who hadn't encountered me complimented my "necklace," which I said, "Oh, it's a compass!"

"What, really? Can I see?"

"Yup!"

I opened the compass, dazzling both young sellers. They very well may have never seen a compass before in real life.

"Can you really use that?"

"Yup! I use it with maps so I don't get lost!"

"Like, on paper? YOU CAN READ A PAPER MAP???"

At which point the one who'd encountered me said, "They don't have a smartphone either!"

"REALLY?!"

With a flourish, I whipped out my dumbphone and flipped it open. The two salespeople watched as though I had done a magic trick, utterly enchanted, staring at me like I was some kind of Amish wizard. I should've bowed.

So now we and the salespeople are on good terms. ...they probably won't try to sell to us again.

Comments

[witchpoetdreamer]

LOLLL okay that encounter sounds delightful, with one thing of exception: door to door smartphone salesmen are a thing??????

[lb_lee]

APPARENTLY! I'd never encountered them before, it was weird! I honestly suspected it might be a scam, thus why I went straight to, "I don't own a smartphone." The vast majority of phone plans and sales stuff become irrelevant the moment I say that, unless they're specifically selling to old people.

[witchpoetdreamer]

It's definitely a good way to avoid them!

[foggerss]

Sunny: I would be dumbfounded too if I saw a compass in real life, in front of my very eyes to be honest. I don't even know where one would get a compass, that's pretty cool!

[lb_lee]

Sneak: A friend gave it to us when we were traveling! It's an old Boy Scout compass from their father! It makes me feel like a Studio Ghibli heroine when I wear it around my neck and lots of people compliment it!

[foggerss]

Oh cool!

[incorrecthorse]

we're surprised at the surprise about specifically paper maps. they aren't any different from digital maps, what's there to read??? sure some people probably can't read any map but then they can't read any map...

[incorrecthorse]

our best guess is that they perhaps somehow never noticed the map part of any digital map apps... despite them literally being map apps....

[dismallyoriented]

My understanding is they lack the ability to orient themselves on the map - google maps stuff highlights the road for you, GPS automates the orientation by only ever showing the stretch of map immediately relevant to your location. It's in the same conceptual bin as reading an analog clock - it's legible, but you have to practice the skills of reading it to stay fluent and quick. And for those who don't learn and never had the chance to practice bc it wasn't a necessity, it stays illegible

[lb_lee]

Mori: We have the opposite problem, we get so mad when the digital map keeps turning around, because we're like "NO NORTH IS UP EVERYONE KNOWS THIS STOPPIT."

Biff (translated from back): Man, phone screens are TINY, you can't SEE anything on them, paper maps you can SEE everything!

[writerkit]

I've found that the automated orientation does not work as well as they would like it to and you often have to walk quite a bit to make sense of whether you're moving in the correct direction from the motion of the blue dot. I actually used to joke about my "urban orienteering" when I would use the position of the sun to help me orient myself relative to the phone map (since it does have a little compass showing which direction of the map is north) and then use the phone map to get to the job interview. This despite the fact that I had a blue dot on it telling me where I was and I was doing this downtown Boston.

Of course, I'm also the sort of person who will regularly tell Google maps that it is wrong about the correct way to get somewhere if I know the area well enough.

[lb_lee]

YUP. THAT. It drove us crazy, it just wasn't worth it and just tended to confuse us more!

[lb_lee]

Sneak: I think maybe they just rely on the GPS's verbal instructions telling them where to go? I don't know, because we never were able to use those ourself! (Even when we had Snitchbrick, map drained its battery SO drastically that it was basically unusable.)

[cheliceri]

I now want a description of your compass.
We’re not good at reading them, as most of the time compasses aren’t accessible, but at one point our O&M teacher brought a Braille compass and let us borrow it for a night. We spent hours thinking we’d broken it because we failed to open it all the way to make the plate lock.

[wolffyluna]

Oh, someone else who has been betrayed by a difficult to open compass! I once got sent off by work with a compass to go out somewhere in the bush, and it was only once I arrived there that I realised I did not know how to open that compass.

[lb_lee]

Sneak: was it a screw-on lid or something? Ours is just a simple hinge that opens like a pocket watch!

[wolffyluna]

Oh, this one had a hinge and a latch, and both were much stiffer than I expected!

[lb_lee]

Oh, I see! We have the opposite problem; lately in warm weather it tends to pop open!

[cheliceri]

A Braille compass is square. Reasonably flat-ish, but not exactly 2D. It has a lid that opens like a pocket watch only it’s bigger.
You put it around your neck and it’s on a string. Not even a nice cord, but a string.
Anyway, inside is a round plate, with degrees marked in single Braille Dots. The needle is a raised arrow, best as I can recall through common memory, and north was deliniated by an N. I don’t recall if South, East and West were marked.
This was twenty years or more ago now, so my memory is a bit shoddy. All I recall is Braille compasses were pretty expensive at the time and likely still are. But it was such a cool piece of equipment.
Also, we can read raised maps. We had to learn in school. But we have problems spatially orienting ourselves on said map.

[lb_lee]

Rogan: I found a little Youtube vid demonstrating, and that looks so cool! Raised maps in particular just look so... intuitive and sensible to me! Biff has sometimes had to improvise like, sculptural versions of a house map when he was trying to communicate a new layout to me and just not getting through in words, but the raised map looks like a more elegant solution! And the Braille compass looks like it'd be so useful if I got turned around at night!

You were right though, Kitty, they do seem to be pretty expensive; a secondhand Boy Scout one on Ebay is going for $75. (There are also Braille pocket watches, which are neat and cheaper.)

[cheliceri]

Yes! We were quite betrayed! Though I fear I accidentally replied to Sneak’s comment by replying to you. Oops.
This one was old. Well-used. But to get it to properly work, and to get the plate to properly lock, you had to open the lid as far back as it would go, and it would click into place. But we were terrified that we would accidentally break the hinges.

[lb_lee]

Sneak: That is a legitimate fear, I too would worry about breaking it, especially since it was surely so expensive!

[lb_lee]

Sneak: oooooh, what’s a Braille compass like? Ours would be totally useless to you, alas; it’s a needle suspended in a short cylindrical case, roughly the size of like 2-3 Oreos stacked on top of each other (depending on whether you are using Double Stuff or not). The needle hangs suspended horizontally, like a clock hand except it is anchored in the center, not one end. There’s a tiny lever to free the needle (usually you keep it stuck so it doesn’t get banged around as you move), so to use the compass, you open the case (it’s just a hinged lid, like a pocket watch), free the needle, and carefully hold the compass flat so the needle will naturally settle pointing north/south. Like a clock, the compass’s face also has west, east, and degree marks around the edge of the face.

[pantha]

Ok, now I want a compass-necklace. How cool! <3

[lb_lee]

Sneak: Boy Scout compasses have little rings on them, so you can just put any sort of chain or string through them! We use a length of paracord, which we also use independently sometimes.

[pantha]

I do not need a boy scout compass. I do not need a boy scout compass...

[lb_lee]

Haha, it seems like the kind of thing you might find in a junk shop! (HELPING!)