There are many reasons why I think I would’ve thrived in the earlier part of the 20th century, chief among them my inability to handle small, technological devices.
Full disclosure: Unlike many of my peers, I did not own a cell phone until my freshman year of college, in 2003. (Or have a driver’s license. In fact, I still don’t have a driver’s license. As someone recently said to me-today actually-“You had a single mother who didn’t want to deal with it.” That pretty much nails it. Moving on).
1. For most of my first two years of college, I owned a cellphone with a PRE-PAID plan. This mostly entailed me spending wads of twentys on “minutes” purchased at a CVS on Chestnut Street in downtown Philadelphia, likely while wearing ill-fitting aqua-blue sweatpants and guzzling Mountain Dew. That definitely happened. It hadn’t occurred to me yet that I could probably just pay a monthly bill and not wear pants.
2. In the fall of 2005, a difficult but beautiful period of my life, the pre-paid period finally came to a crashing end. I was stumbling (early-morning stumbling) UP my then-boss’s (now dear friend’s) steep, spiral 19th-century staircase, when my phone fell out of my hands and smashed to pieces. I pulled myself together and walked to the T-Mobile store on Walnut Street and finally figured out that I was capable of paying a phone bill.
3. 2006-2010: The number of flip phones I went through during this period is myriad. One fell out of my pocket as I rode my bike across Market Street, in Philadelphia. I think I misplaced one. There were so many. Finally, in 2010 (?), possibly early 2011, I made the leap to the Blackberry. It seemed uncomfortable and expensive at first, but I LOVED distracting myself with Facebook for the minutes it took the D train to rattle across the Manhattan Bridge. I loved that I could post angry, passive-aggressive Facebook updates while at work without having to actually get on a computer (this was a WHOLE new world for me).
But, mind you, for ME. I was totally aware and into that this was happening in the world, and completely embracing it, it just wasn’t happening in my life until then. Better late to the party than never is my motto!
2011: Following an awkward evening with a kind gentleman, I made the poor choice to treat myself to a cab on 14th and 1st. I still believe this was what the universe gave me for snubbing my beloved. For the first and only time in my cab-riding adult life, I got stuck with a real Travis Bickle-esque sociopath. It was terrifying. I remember toying with the idea of jumping out of a moving vehicle onto Essex Street, but decided in the moment that was riskier than staying in the cab. After I escaped, once we got over the bridge, amidst a flurry of obscenities and spitting, in my haste to exit, I realized, once I was safely in my apartment, that my phone, which had been sitting in my lap, was now making hundreds of dollars worth of phone calls to Egypt-as I later learned (I really, REALLY hope they were phone calls to Mom or Grandma).
With a few phone calls to customer service and some tears later, I had a new Blackberry and thankfully did not have to pay all of that massive phone bill (anyone going through my call logs of like, forever, will note that my most “international” phone call has been to friends with San Francisco area codes. (When my cousin lived in Rome, we totally called him huddled around the house phone, all taking turns, like he was away at war).
2012: Let’s fast forward to this afternoon. I am several weeks away from my MA degree, whatever that’s going to mean (aside from complicated customer service phone calls forever-regarding student loans, not cell phones), but regardless, it is one personal achievement that I am incredibly proud of and is all my own-when it happens. For the moment though, I am still getting there. Still working on it.
This afternoon, I was working and chatting with a classmate in the editing lab in the building on 13th Street. I left my station to use the bathroom and slipped my phone in my back pocket (as I often do). I will spare the grimy details, but I am now the proud owner of an Android phone. It doesn’t have buttons, which for me, is really exciting. But this wasn’t supposed to happen today. I am THREE weeks away from my official upgrade. I spent over $200 today in less than an hour. People with real mental illnesses do that with cheeseburgers or something. Or people like me, who at 27 years old still cannot properly handle mobile technology. At least I had the wherewithal to NOT take my external hard drive to the bathroom with me.
Maybe one day, when I am not riding the F train with three bags and a used copy of an AVID tutorial book, I will think long and hard about getting an iPhone. And then, after a long, careful thought process, I will slowly do it.
FUO (fever of unknown origin) 