My Thoughts on Cell-Reliance

It's no mystery that I am slow to accept change, especially with technology. Call me unjustifiably old-fashioned. I remember being mortified when iPods carried digital music into a scary new age; sure enough album art and even the album itself has become increasingly irrelevant in our culture. The CDs I grew up with suited me perfectly fine, along with my soft spot for vinyl. The same can be said about phones, I never owned a cell phone until freshman year of college, and it was forced on me because my parents couldn't stand how frequently I was MIA. It's possible this spite-for-change trait is hereditary. My father owned a beeper until pay phones were being ripped out of sidewalks.

Lately we've had a cascade of cell phone advertisements about wireless networks and applications. It still surprises me that so much convenience and information can fit in one's pocket, but for most it's old news. So old, in fact, we're now nitpicking. Ads today boast how much better their wireless maps are, or that their phones run multiple applications at once. The need for immediate satisfaction baffles me. One ad hypothetically asks which network you would trust to upload pictures of your newborn baby on Facebook, while you're all still in the hospital. An important question, for sure.

I've been thinking about my amusing personal history with cell phones. If they were all still alive today and could form a gang, the words "ragtag" or "motley" come to mind. My first cell phone (pictured top left) was a happy blue brick with barely any color in the screen (the picture must be an update, or lie). That phone served me two years, until my parents discovered that I had circumvented the obstacle of a missing keypad shell by pushing a pen or fork into the tiny holes to dial numbers. A new phone came even faster when they found out how well I could dial while driving.

I was excited for my replacement, which was black and flipped open, though it was just about as basic as the previous model. Our time together was brief. Within a year I was in need of another; the antenna had snapped and the screen display was backwards. All the hot glue and mirrors in the world couldn't save it.

I went to a dive cell phone store in Fitchburg determined not to spend money. I was given a "temporary" second-hand flip phone until my contract allowed me to renew a few months later.

That temporary phone proved to be too endearing to let go of when I discovered just how second-hand it was. There were Lil Wayne ringtones paid for and installed. Several videos featured a laughing, drunken fat man in a hot tub. There were pictures of grandparents, children, friends eating cotton candy in front of a ferris wheel, and, um, a dead deer. Finally, several text messages implied the prior owner was a drug dealer, and I couldn't escape the feeling that I'd inherited an orphan. I decided the phone deserved a second chance at life, and that I'd call it my own until the wheels came off.

(I should note before continuing that for years I abhorred text messaging and how often it consumed people that would be otherwise engaged in conversing or living. I didn't really allow myself to text people until as recent as this past Christmas, especially since half of Los Angeles conducts business through texting and e-mail. It took three phones for this to happen.)

It's been two years, and yesterday I finally laid the ol' plow horse to rest. It had shown signs of dementia in its old age, calling numbers by itself at odd hours and often refusing to work except through speakerphone. I'm sad to see it go, but I expect it would have wanted me to move on and be happy.

My replacement is an old phone of my girlfriend's, once again nothing special. It dials numbers and sends text messages. Some day I'll probably end up with a fancy smart phone with internet access and applications, probably when all phones are smart and the new is much newer than the new we know now. Maybe by then I'll be used to them. But I'm sure I'll miss those old fashioned cellular phones.