History repeats itself.

Not longago, while visiting the Long Barracks Museum at the Alamo in San Antonio,Texas, we came across this statue. It’s not a big statue, only 18 inches highor so, and displayed in a clear plastic box. There are other statues of asimilar size throughout the short tour of the Long Barracks. This one depicts apadre—a priest or clergyman of some sort (we didn’t get his name) from thelong-ago days before the Alamo became the Alamo and was known as the MissionSan Antonio de Valero.

Whatintrigues me about the statue is that it proves beyond doubt that historyrepeats itself; that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Becausewhat the statue clearly depicts is a padre with his handheld digital device.And he is doing, way back then, the same kind of thing you see happeningeverywhere, all the time, today.

Maybe heis engaged in a phone call on speaker. Perhaps he is sending (or reading) atext message. It could be that he is using the camera function to take aphotograph—maybe even a selfie.

Could hehave gotten an alert on one of his social media platforms? Is he responding tosomething on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or the wreck formerly known asTwitter?

Since heis some kind of Catholic clergyman, it is probably a safe bet that he is not perusinga dating site or matchmaking service. I suppose he could be checking theweather forecast. Or he might be watching cute cat videos on YouTube.

By way offull disclosure, I don’t have any kind of handheld digital device myself, sothis is only totally ignorant, wholly uninformed speculation on my part.