Mom: Honey, the Cleavers called today and invited us over for dinner next Thursday.

Dad: But Thursday's the Horn Blowers' Concert.

Mom: No, I called the school and the recording says that's on Monday.

Dad: They changed the phone number. The new recording says it's Thursday.

Child 1: (loudly and off key) TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR, HOW I WANDER IN THE CAR...

Mom: Well, if it's Thursday, then let's move the Cleavers to Tuesday.

Child 2: Gurgle bwa glack wa BLUK!

Dad: Tuesday we promised we'd visit Aunt Edna. There's nothing on the schedule for Friday.

Child 1: (tugging on a sleeve) You be Barney and I'll be Baby Bop! I LOVE YOU, YOU LOVE ME, WE'RE SITTING IN A GREAT BIG TREE...

[Note to Dear Reader: please stay with us, it'll be worth it.]

Mom: Friday we have to go to the preschool candy sale information meeting.

Dad: But when I sent in the forms I picked the second meeting, a week from Wednesday!

Child 2: Waaaa. Waaaa!

Mom: You had the wrong address. They didn't get them, so we got stuck with Friday night instead.

Child 1: Lookit, Mommy, baby can FLY!

Child 2: WAAAA!

Mom and Dad: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

You're probably thinking this sounds like chaos, aren't you? Well, you're wrong. Mom and Dad (you guessed it, I'm the Dad) both have Palm organizers, so, by definition, we're organized. Well, okay, not all of us. Child 1 consistently demonstrates that age four and organization go together about as well as turtles and calculus, and Child 2 refuses to accept a schedule for anything, including sleep.

The problem is, however, that we're organized separately, not together. Sure we share calendars and address books, but we can't keep them working together. We try to sit down at the beginning of each month to compare notes and get everything straight, but no matter how hard we try to work together, by the end of the month everything is hopelessly out of whack. My wife writes in a new phone number, I record an address change, she reschedules a meeting, I add a doctor's appointment, and by the end of the month, you'd think we didn't even live in the same city, let alone the same house.

Sure, all of that information goes into our Palm devices, and it gets synchronized into the PC that has anchored itself in our kitchen. And we could check the Palm desktop on the PC every time we wanted to change something. But Palm organizers were supposed to free us from that ball and chain, weren't they?

This isn't just a problem for two-Palm families. Imagine how much time's wasted among multi-Palm workgroups in an office. If the boss moves a meeting, everyone needs to be told and write it in their Palm. If a customer changes a phone number, everyone in the office needs to scribble it in.