The Phone

About three weeks ago I had a catastrophe  For one reason or another my iPhone began to refuse to charge. I went through all the moves, putting a cigarette lighter under the charging wire going in, wiggling, cleaning the port with one of Puck’s diabetic swabs, but it was like my phone had Ebola, and was slowly going down, down, down. On the last day of its life we talked. I knew all the information on it had to be transferred to other devices, such as my iPad (which also died from the same malady) my eMac, a couple of PCs and a flash drive. Finally, however, the little guy breathed his last, and his Apple faded into obscurity. 

One cannot begin to describe the sense of loss when a phone dies. You are alone in the world. You find yourself reaching for someone who’s no longer there. You realize how vulnerable you are. You drive to the supermarket, three blocks away, and you think, “My God! What if something happens? What if the car dies, what if I have a crash, what if I FORGOT something and no longer have my notepad to remind me?” You are naked! 

You survive the first trip. Then comes the long, lonely hours of silence. You have the MacBook Pro, but it’s not as intimate as the iPhone was. With the updated software you can even use FaceTime, but you must be near a base station to do it so you are shackled to home, or a McDonald’s or whatever.  It’s not like when you could just bring up your little buddy and talk, or, or, or. . . take a PICTURE! You suddenly realize how many precious moments are being lost forever now that no one will ever see except you. Like the guy at Walmart who exposed his butt crack when bending over to pick up a twelve pack of beer, or better yet the girl who exposed HERS when picking up the same brand (hey it’s Texas, ok?). 

You know that major surgery will heal the iPhone, but the Apple Store is forty-five minutes away, and you delay the drive. That’s a long way to drive without a phone! You begin to venture out more and more. You discover that most stores still have one of those old fashioned phones, you know, the ones with the cord that goes to the wall, and they are most happy to let you use it if need be. Then you begin to notice that driving is a whole lot less complicated when you don’t have calls, texts, the weather, FaceBook, and Yahoo banging on you every second of the trip.  You begin to be amazed at just how much goes on while you are driving that you didn’t notice before. People crossing the street, people on bicycles, COPS, a whole slew of folks that just popped out of the woodwork.  Where have all these people BEEN for al these years? Also, theres always that one person who called you constantly, even two minutes after you left the driveway. You know the one. It’s the “Oh God,” call, because they have a special ring, that becomes more obnoxious each time you hear it, and when you hear it you whisper, “Oh GOD!” Well, that person is gone, or at least pushed back. 

At first you miss the GPS feature, but then you discover MEMORY! That and street signs. For notes you start to use note pads, real ones, not the cyber one that you peck away at while trying to miss that little girl fetching her ball in the street. You're trips around town begin to get longer, and longer. You find that it’s not so urgent to answer an email RIGHT NOW! Actually, you can answer them once a day, just like the real mail, and the world does not stop turning. In fact, for all your ego, and the illusion that you are holding the world up on your shoulders, your communications for the entire day, to the PLANET takes, oh, ‘bout an hour, IF you’re making coffee at the same time. 

As your withdrawal begins to subside it seems to migrate to your friends and family. They wonder just when you’re going to make that trip to Austin.  They wonder if you’re broke. Frankly, they wonder if you’ve fallen into a pit of depression and are withdrawing from the world. They can’t imagine you driving to the supermarket and not knowing that some movie star exposed her crotch in L. A. last night! Or that Justin Bieber got caught drinking yet another BEER! Didn’t you know that ISIS took over another village with a name that sounds like your coughing up your lunch? What’s the MATTER with you? Oh, there’s the radio, but it primarily plays, well MUSIC, and you don’t have to look at it, you can just listen, and drive at the same time. 

Your life settles into a routine of calm, easy going non-events. You rise, drink coffee, smoke, drive to the store, and come home. As the weeks pass you notice you don’t reach for your pocket any more. You get into the car and do not panic. You even take drives into the country and put the top down.  The wind doesn’t interupt anything anymore. And, when you return, there’s the corpse of the iPhone, sitting as a paperweight, on top of the papers and mail you need to read for the day.