The Clapper

I got The Clapper when I was a kid. I think it was for Christmas.

You know, that thing where you clap and then the lamp turns off, then you clap and the lamp turns back on.

I wanted it bad. I think it seemed like the future to me. Like we were all idiots for not having this thing all over our homes. Why WOULDN’T you have The Clapper? Why would you get up like a sucker and hit some sort of primitive switch when you could just clap your hands? It’s like a technological genie that you could have in your home.

The first thing I learned about The Clapper was that I had nothing that I really wanted to turn on and off. I had almost nothing that was important and electronic. I was a kid.

The second thing I learned about The Clapper was that your stereo was a stupid thing to hook up. Because the music, if it had the right beat, would turn the stereo right off. Certain songs, they were close enough to The Clapper’s rhythm that they shut the stereo off.

The third thing, and maybe this isn’t in order anymore, is that The Clapper doesn’t respond to your claps and your claps alone. To explain the problem simply, my brother could walk into my room, clap, and turn off whatever it was I had going.

Oh, and the fourth thing was that I had no rhythm.

You could set The Clapper to work on two or three claps. I tried two at first, but I found out that sometimes just talking turned something on, and almost every song had a point that would shut it off. Which, even though it wasn’t hooked up to the stereo anymore, meant that when I listened to music, whatever I had hooked up to The Clapper would cycle on and off.

Which is why I switched it to three claps.

But then I didn’t have the rhythmic abilities to get shit to turn on.

The Clapper had three little lights, and for each clap, one lit up. And when it was set to three claps, you had to light up three of those lights in a row to turn something on. And I could. Not. Do it. I’d get one, then two, then fall apart before three. Then try to wait for the red lights to turn off and try again. Then probably get interrupted because my brother would screw it up on purpose. And by the time I turned something on, it wasn’t very magical. It was easily more work than the primitive switch.

They still sell The Clapper. Which is fucking crazy because now there are these women, Siri and Alexa and Cortana, and they should be able to do just about anything for you. These women are a lot more competent than The Clapper. And then even tell jokes.

And while it’s fun to watch Samuel L. Jackson interact with Siri, I don’t want to see him clap to turn his lights off while he’s wearing an eye shade and in bed. I just don’t.