Jamming Your Phone In

I got to go to Japan to visit a friend in 2008. There are a lot of stories to tell about that trip but I was reminded of one yesterday. My friend Sean had to work during the day so I would go traveling around by myself. One of the days I took the train to Kumamoto. After going to the castle …

and wandering around the city having a great time, I stumbled on an empty pachinko parlor. I didn’t know if I would get another chance to do it so I went inside. It was the middle of the afternoon and the place was totally empty. This isn’t my picture, I felt weird about taking one when I was in there for some reason, but I wanted to share it to give a visual example of what it looked like.

If you don’t know, Pachinko is a way of gambling. It is like a mix between a slot machine and a pinball machine. Sean had told me that a lot of people go in, put their money in, and just jam their phone into the knob that shoots the balls around the machine so it keeps going. Apparently there is no skill involved so people sit there, drink beer and watch the balls fly around.

The reason that I thought of this story was because yesterday I was filling my car up with gas and the driver of a truck for a telecom company was filling up just behind me. He had jammed his phone into the pump handle and gone inside to buy some drinking water and salt (it is really snowy up here in New York right now). While he was inside, his tank finished filling. But because his phone was jammed in there the gasoline kept flowing. It was spilling down the side of his truck like a waterfall. Luckily a woman at another pump saw it and called it out to me. I ran over and stopped it. But not before at least a few gallons had spilled all over the ground.

I am not much of a gambler but if I do it, I want to make sure I am at least doing something. I wouldn’t jam my phone in a pachinko machine. I would turn the knob around with the fantasy that I was the one who was going to score big because of my influence. I also wouldn’t gamble with shoving something into the gasoline pump. It isn’t worth it. Not only did he lose some money, create a dangerous situation, but he also wasted some gasoline which them evaporated into the air and seeped into the ground adding to toxifying the environment.

Have some delusional fun! Don’t jam your phone in.

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