ON SMART PHONES AND LOSING MY WAY

My name is Marjorie and I am an addict.  

No, no.  Not that kind of addict.  It’s my phone – I am addicted to my phone.  Is there a twelve-step program for the likes of me?  If there is, I expect there is a long waiting list. 

 

Let me tell you what happened to me on Sunday.  Well, actually, the story begins on Saturday when I left my phone behind at a family birthday party.  We were driving home, my husband at the wheel and me riding shotgun, when I reached for my phone and couldn’t find it.  I suspected I had left it on the dining room table after using it to take photos of the birthday girl. 

 

Near panic (mine, not Bill's).

 

We considered turning back, but we were tired and already on the freeway.  I made Bill promise he would let me use his phone to listen to a podcast at bedtime (this is how I fall asleep—part of my addiction), then called my bonus son Marty, who was still at the party. 

 

“Is my phone on the dining room table?”

 

“Is it black?  Would it have a message from (names a name)?”

 

“Yes and yes.”

 

“Do you want me to grab it?”

 

“Yes.  I’ll come get it from you tomorrow.”  (He lives between us and the home of his brother, where the party took place.)

 

“OK.  It’s in my pocket.”

 

There followed an uneasy drive home, soon after which I crawled into bed with Bill’s phone and made it through the night. 

 

Sunday morning, I checked for texts on my computer, then reached for my phone to enter Marty’s address in GPS – it was by no means the first time I had been to his house, but Bill had always driven there—and then realized I didn't have access to GPS because I didn't have my phone.  So, I asked Bill to remind me of the turns once I got off the freeway and headed out. 

 

My first mistake was to turn east (my accustomed route to my daughters’ homes) instead of west on the highway a mile below our house.  I thought this was fine.  I would merely take the other one of the two possible bridges over the Columbia River.   

 

You can guess what happened next.  

I crossed the bridge, got on the freeway, got off the freeway, and then got lost.  I drove around the correct area for over half an hour, getting more and more frustrated.  I couldn’t call Bill or Marty for further directions because I didn’t have my phone.  I asked myself what I would have done before cell phones – and remembered paper maps.  Of course, I didn’t have one. 

 

I was ready to drive home and tell Bill he had to go and get my phone.  (I wasn’t going to ask him to do it because I was near tears by this time – I don’t like being lost and I was very upset by the feeling that part of my brain—my external hard drive, if you will—was sitting at Marty’s house, unreachable by me.)  Just then, I noticed a street that I knew would take me to my daughter Anne’s house.  I drove there and knocked on her door, hugged her babies, and confessed my predicament.  She gave me excellent directions, which led me to the embarrassing conclusion that I had driven past Marty’s street multiple times. 

           

After retrieving my phone, I drove gratefully home.  Of course, I first checked for phone messages and texts. 

 

How has it come to this? 

 

For the first 30 plus years of my life, I lived happily with a phone tethered to the wall.  Toward the end of that time, I obtained an answering machine, and after that, the phone company sold me voice messaging.  Prior to this, I had done just fine without any kind of messaging.  If I wasn’t at home to pick up the phone, the caller would call again. When my second daughter was born, my brother-in-law bought me a cordless phone because it would be easy to reach and carry around while tending to my little ones.  What a concept.

 

I believe I was in my early 40s when I purchased my first cell phone.  It wasn’t smart; It was just a phone you could carry with you when you left home.  It is only a slight exaggeration to say it was approximately the size of a loaf of bread. Later, I got a flip phone.  I think this one might have been capable of texting, but I didn’t start using this feature until a friend’s teenaged daughter taught me how to send a text to one of my twenty-something daughters.

 

I think I got my first smart phone around 2012 or 2013, and that’s when my troubles began.  At first, I only used it to make phone calls and send and receive texts.  Then, I began to take photos.  After that, it was a slippery slope to checking the weather and the stock market, not to mention email. (It was a red-letter day when a friend told me I could turn off notifications for email.) I am happy to report that I do not have Facebook or Facebook Messaging on my phone, but the above-listed activities are more than enough to keep me addicted.  (I do have Instagram on my phone – don’t want to miss any granddaughter photos . . .)

 

Oh, and Google.  I remember when I used to ask an idle question while watching a TV show—as in, I wonder how old that actor is.  In the old days, that would be the end of it.  Now, I usually do a Google search, which leads me to another Google search. . . No wonder I was twitching without my phone. 

 

So, is a smart phone a good thing?  Well, apart from GPS and being able to call someone from my car (or anywhere, given we no longer have a landline), here is the upside of my phone.  I use it to listen to podcasts and books, not only while trying to fall asleep, but while cooking or walking or working on a jigsaw puzzle. This listening is one of the great pleasures of my life. 

 

So, no, I’m not going to give up my smart phone.  There is no turning back now.  This must be how owners of early automobiles felt after giving up their horses and buggies—looking back fondly at their old way of life, but knowing they would never give up the smooth purr of the engine or go back to the days of shoveling dung.

 

For now, I have turned off the sound on my phone and hidden it in a drawer while I write.

 

I hope I will remember where it is.

                                                                               Photo by Neil Soni on Unsplash