Folks,
I don’t recommend writing a soliloquy to a recently departed cell phone after watching a David Lynch movie, because this is what happens…
I write today with amidst a deluge of emotion. Over the past week I’ve watched my ole’ reliable, lime green phone die one system at a time. It has served me well ever since July of 2008 and I pretty much beat the ever living hell out of that thing and it somehow always came back for more…well up until yesterday when crucial buttons needed to communicate with others shut down rendering it almost completely useless. There was no intervention or treatment that could have prolonged it’s life. To do so would have been cruel and in the end I showed it the respect it deserved and just let the bastard die. I’ve gone through all the cliched stages of grief too:
Denial: The first signs of trouble were a couple of days ago when I was unable for a bit to hear calls that I was trying to make. I was somehow able to make this right for one last call. If only I would have known it was to be the call I’d make from it, the last series of noises for it’s received to pick up and then encode and send off to the ear of someone else, I would have paid more attention, paid more respect to the service you provided me, which was spotty at times, but (usually) reliable. Let’s accept the moment for what it was: fleeting and typical of the one-sided relationship we engaged in. I would demand and you would provide, alas you cannot provide no more.
Anger: I was pissed.
Bargaining: I looked up prices for the phones I could replace it with…does that count?
Depression: I became genuinely sad for about 5 minutes. Not about the loss of this inanimate object, but more about how dependent I was/continue to be to my cell phone and launched into a short lived inner-monologue on this being a microcosm of today’s society. I was then slightly depressed that I spent that much time engaging, of all people, myself in such a trite debate.
Acceptance: This morning I accepted the fact that it was time to go buy a new phone.
So, off I trekked with the little thing still in my pocket barely able to vibrate when an unanswerable text would be received. Here’s a mini live blog of what happened when I got to AT&T:
High Noon: Arrive at the store and immediately meet Chris the Sales Guy
12:02: Turn to my right after becoming annoyed with my salesman counterpart and see the iPhone display.
12:05-1pm: Blackout and come to calling my mom with an iPhone in my left hand with a quirky plaid case protecting it.
There you have it. I’m an even bigger member of the Wicker Park Hipster Clubhouse now that I have some more of the required gear to nonchalantly show off while I trek to my lovely coffee shop. Oh and this thing is so amazing that I did indeed do this entire post FROM MY PHONE! This really only means that I’ll be able to do actual live blogs. Watch out!
-Wine
PS Whiskey is taking a hiatus from posting. And by hiatus I do mean that he feels he’s gained all the answers he was seeking from this social experiment and I’m going to convince him otherwise. He can be so dramatic sometimes…
