Technology Bites

Let me start by saying that I am hardly one of those people who goes through their life treating their cell phone like it is another appendage - possibly one more important even than the starter kit with which we were born.

I've had one forever, of course. The first one was a big expense and a big decision. This is fitting, as it was also a big-assed phone. I kept it for only the most dire of emergencies and my friends were all cautioned to never use it to contact me with frivolities. Those minutes weren't free, you know!

I was a little in awe of it. To have the ability to call people from wherever I might be - even on the road (as long as I was in a zone covered by my plan) - bordered on the nearly unbelievable.

We're living in the future, baby! Anything can happen now!

As technology improved I more or less kept up. I upgraded my phone every couple years. I always viewed them as a nice convenience but nothing more. I was still conservative with my usage, relying on it more for outgoing calls, with incoming calls being rare enough to make me jump when they came through.

I didn't know my number and had to look it up when anyone asked. I've watched my daughter become completely attached to hers. I watched my husband develop a love/hate relationship with his. I maintained an air of detachment about mine.

The only exception was when I traveled without my family. I became a texting machine on par with my thirteen year old daughter when I traveled. Well, maybe that's overstating it a bit. But I text a LOT on vacation.

My most recent phone has internet as well, and I have found myself slightly more reliant upon that. I don't have it mastered. My skills with the stylus and the keyboard are not such that I can do everything my phone is capable of. I update FaceBook and Twitter. I read email (though I have a hard time responding to it). The sound of a message coming through no longer takes me by surprise. But it still makes me jump! I want to know what's going on!

Many of you know that I went out of town for a long weekend this past weekend. On the second day of my vacation, my phone died. Just totally flat-lined. It was fully charged, but everything went black. The panic I felt over this was unnerving. It pulled my plug. I was disconnected. I was suddenly and unexpectedly disconnected from EVERYthing. I was angry, I was upset, but I was also somehow - scared. The world was going on without me and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. Things could happen and I wouldn't know!

I became ultra-aware of everyone else's cell phones. I passed a guy with one of those notepads and I nearly hyperventilated. I was in serious communication withdrawal.

I picked my phone up every hour or two to see if it had miraculously returned to me. Maybe the whole thing had just been a bad dream. Once, it actually sparked up. The joy and hope I experienced in that brief flash of artificial light! But alas, it was extinguished before I could even check messages.

I called the hubs from my friends phone and he said, when in doubt, reboot. Nothing. He called her phone the next morning and told me to take the battery out and pop it back in. I did so. The phone? She was revived. I bet you were getting a little nervous there!!! I know I was!!!

When I arrived home, just a couple hours ago, the first thing I did was rush to my laptop and put my head on its cool, sweet keys. I love you. I'm sorry I left you behind. Let's never part again. (Don't be too concerned, my family was still at school/work - if they were here I PROBABLY would have greeted them first...)

It took no small amount of time to catch up on my blog reading and I apologize if my comments were a little on the lazy side.

It was good to be away, and it's good to be back!