iPhone, you phone, we all phone
Share with others:
You know you've sunk to a new depth of shallowness -- to coin a phrase that will never be used again -- when you are embarrassed by your phone.
I always used to say I didn't need a phone that surfed the Web and started my car and fetched my dry cleaning and took the dog out for me. That's what interns are for.
I wanted my phone to simply be a phone, making calls and not dropping them. Maybe some light texting. I didn't want to watch TV on a screen the size of a pack of cigarettes or play the digital descendant of those little games where you try to get the tiny BBs to settle into divots.
Besides: People with smartphones tend to have the social value of a stump.
Having only a museum-piece boring dumb phone ensured that I was fully conscious and alert for all in-person interactions, able to pay attention to conversations, picking up on nuances of inflection, expression, body language. My phone spent most of its time in pocket or purse, freeing me up to enjoy people and experience their ...
... complete absorption with their smartphones.
I haven't seen the irises of anyone's eyes since 2009. I began to feel like some kind of freak, approaching knots of people at parties to find them hunched over their phones texting their sitters, looking up the recipe for a lime rickey or settling whether Christopher Plummer is dead or Canadian.
How could my chitchat matter when they had the whole world in their hands? I was on the fence about taking on the expense when my boyfriend, whom I will call iGuy, pushed me off.
"I'm thinking of getting a smartphone," I said.
"Mmm. Damn it!" he replied over the cheeping of Angry Birds.
I snatched his iPhone out of his hand, causing a crashing of crates and pigs.
"Hey. Hello. I'm thinking of getting a smartphone."
First Published August 25, 2011 12:00 am
