I Miss Not Having a Cell Phone (Sometimes)

The other day, while trying to jam my too big Android phone into my smallest purse, along with my wallet and car key, I thought, I really miss that little Nokia flip phone I used to have. That flip phone not only fit in the tiniest of purses, it fit into my jeans pocket.

The front pocket. Not just the back pocket, where it runs the risk of being sat on, or falling into the toilet because I forgot it was there. I’ve never actually dropped a phone in the toilet, but I know plenty of others who have. And it’s totally something I would do. (I did drop flashlight in the toilet once at summer camp.) Consequently, I rarely put my phone in my back pocket.

That flip phone was also just a phone. It did phone calls, texting (of limited length), and the only game it had was that one with the pixelized snake that gets longer and longer until it runs into itself.

This revelation isn’t original, but since the smartphone has entered my life:

- I check my email too often,

- I spend too much time playing games on my phone, and

- I’ve lost the ability to trust that I can remember to do anything without setting a reminder alarm. Even though I had no problem taking pills, meeting friends for coffee, or getting out the door to work on time up to the age of 30 (when I first got a damn smartphone).

Then I got to thinking, Actually, I miss not having a cell phone at all. I got my first cell phone in my 3rd year of university. I was 20. Prior to getting that cell phone:

- Being unreachable didn’t fill me with a sickening mixture of guilt and anxiety. (I will admit, if I’d had a kid back then, it might have.),

- I checked my email once, maybe twice, a day. Believe it or not, nothing was so important it couldn’t wait until the next day for a response, and most importantly

- My boss could not contact me anywhere anytime and expect a near-immediate reply. I mean, I was at a military college so technically I could be found, even in the middle of the night. But if someone really needed to track me down, they would have to come find me in person, and if I wasn’t home because it was 8pm on Saturday and I’d gone out with friends? Oh well, leave me a note. I’ll get back to you later.

Oh, the freedom.

This post was inspired by a text from my boss at 10pm on a Thursday night ‘asking’ to change my shift on Friday so that I would be going into work earlier and leaving later. The following Sunday at 7:30pm, I received another shift-extending request for Monday morning.

Sometimes I want to throw my phone in a lake, or out a car window. Or out a car window into a lake.

But then, I’m glad my son’s teacher can easily reach me. And I do enjoy playing those addictive hidden object games on my phone. Conundrum, thy name is smartphone.