Who’s
texting me??? I HAVE to know!!! I am a woman possessed, compulsively reaching
into my purse every ten minutes or so to check my phone. In an age where everything
consumable is accessible from your fingertips, text messages are my kryptonite.
Emails? Nah. Voicemails? Not so much. But text
messages? I MUST have them and I must
have them NOW! With texting, you know someone is thinking about you seconds
after they have the thought. It’s instant gratification of the mind!
You can
only imagine, then, how I felt when I reached into my purse at work and
discovered my iPhone 4s was M-I-A! And yes, I did say the iPhone 4s… I’m one of
those gals who waits for her phone to die (or in this case go missing) before
upgrading to the latest and greatest model. At first, I couldn’t believe it. In
all my years of using cell phones, I had never lost one. My coworkers helped me
look in every crack and crevice, as they simultaneously bombarded me with
questions: “Are you sure you put your phone back in your purse?” “Did you carry
it somewhere else and just forget about it?” “Do you think someone is playing a
joke on you?”
My coworker Eddie, a technology
junkie, is an avid PC devotee and thus, a Mac hater. Despite his disdain for
everything Apple, he scoured the Internet on my behalf (via his Samsung Galaxy)
and determined we could locate my phone via an application called Find My iPhone. “Does my ‘location services’
have to be turned on to use the application?” I asked. “Yes,” Eddie replied.
“Oops,” I responded. “I don’t keep that on, because it drains my battery.” Bummer.
But Eddie the Relentless figured out a way to remotely force my
location services to turn on from his phone. Voilà! The hunt for my iPhone was back in
business. I watched the compass dial on the “Find my iPhone” app spin around
and around… Guess where it landed? At my place of work! Unlike
Elvis, it hadn’t “left the building.” Then where the hell was it? By the end of
the night, the phone had not materialized and I went home, empty handed. I felt
so isolated. Not because I couldn’t play Candy Crush, (which I don’t play by
the way). It was like someone had unplugged me and I was completely
disconnected from the world.
All this angst made me wonder about
the days when I didn’t even HAVE a cell phone. Wasn’t I fine back then? And
wasn’t there a time when I used to write actual letters instead of sending an email?
Friends used to tell me how much they loved my letters. “You sound just like
the way you talk!” was a frequent comment. I used to write someone a long
letter and by the time it was received, the uber-important fight I had described
in minute detail, had long since blown over. Isn’t there something charming
about that? And how about mailing someone a birthday/anniversary/get well card?
Well, those were replaced by e-cards a while back, and these days I simply give
the person a shout-out on their Facebook wall. Sigh. I write so infrequently
with an actual pen that I no longer remember cursive. Do you?
When I started writing this blog
entry, it was simply going to be a humorous anecdote that played out like an
episode of “Monk.” I could call it “Mr. Monk and the Cell Phone Caper,” in
which Adrian Monk solves the mystery of my absentee phone with his famous line:
“Here’s what happened…” But somehow, the words weren’t coming. I realized I was
struggling because my story wasn’t just about losing a cell phone. After all, I
could replace it practically for free by extending my cell phone contract! No,
what was bothering me was how much I had come to rely on this device and what
that dependence said about me.
Cell phones have become like our
IVs… our lifeline to the world. Or are they? During the 24 hours I was phoneless, I still met up with an old friend
who happened to be in the city for the day. We had no prearranged plans; I
didn’t even know he was coming to town. Despite that, he managed to track me
down at my job, without my ever receiving a text message, an email or a
voicemail from him. It made me realize that when someone really wants to
contact you, they will find a way to do so. So I ask you—do we really need cell phones as much as we
think? Or perhaps the real question is… do I?
Are you wondering what happened to
my iPhone 4s? Eddie the Relentless continued to track the phone when he got
home and I got an email from him at 3:00 a.m., telling me the phone was still
at work and that he was going to bed. As my mom would say, “What a mench!” Several
weeks later, the exact whereabouts of the phone is still a mystery, but I have
since learned that I did not, in fact, lose it. I subsequently replaced
my old model with the newer (though not the newest)
iPhone 5. And while it’s nice to have a phone again, I somehow feel different.
Don’t get me wrong—I still love my text messages! I just don’t feel the sense
of urgency about them. I’ve discovered the people who want to reach out to me, will… one way or another. Perhaps the
next step is to change the way I reach out to people. It might be time to
break out my old stationary. Let’s just hope my handwriting is still legible...
