HitchDied

Party Like Its 2007!

| 15 Comments

In the early 1990s, my parents bought my grandparents a touch tone telephone for Christmas. They attached a card reading, “Welcome to the 80s!”

In the early aughts, my siblings and I bought my parents a cordless telephone for Christmas.  We attached a card reading, “Welcome to the 90s!”

In the grand tradition of my family’s telecommunication habits, I have always been a late adopter with cell phones.  I didn’t get my first of any sort until 2005.  And now, in 2011, I’ve finally caved and bought a smart phone.

You’d think I’d have had one since the early days, given a) I compulsively look up the answer to passing curiosities b) my sister has been working on Windows phones since I was in undergrad.  But I’ve held off.

For a long time I said, “I’ll get a smart phone as soon as I get a real job.” But then my phone started to die, and I’m not even looking for a real job. And as long as I’m pretending that I’m a Writer with a capital W, shouldn’t I like… have access to potential clients at all times? YES.  Right? And also Angry Birds.  This is America.  So I went and got myself a Samsung Focus with Windows Phone 7 (Bite me, iPhonians, gotta keep it in the family).

But it hasn’t been as easy transition.  I feel like the worst possible combination of a child and a senior citizen using this thing.  The technology perplexes and terrifies me.  I’m an even slower texter than I was before.  I accidentally hit the search button about every twenty seconds, and half the time Bing popping up startles me so much I almost drop the phone.  And I really don’t want to drop my phone now.

I’m also trying to keep acceptable phone manners now that my phone is ten times as distracting.  I’ve been giving Collin shit for two years now for his occasional lapses into “phone douche” behavior, and I don’t want to be a lowly hypocrite who can’t look up from her phone during conversations now.  But I can TWEET PHOTOS PROVING HOW AWESOME MY SOCIAL LIFE IS! And play Wordament! And check my email, sort of! And look at a little cartoon to tell me what the weather is in case I’m not near a window!

Will this smart phone be the straw that breaks my baby marriage’s back? Or worse, the straw that brings SkyNet to self-awareness?  Or maybe I’ll just tweet a lot more.

 

15 Comments

  1. Haha, I also still own a super old Nokia, and I also got it in 2005 , though it was not my first. It looks like this:
    http://newvaluestreams.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/nokia-1100.jpg
    I am not sure I want a smartphone, I still like it simple, and it seems to me nowadays phones are not as sturdy as they used to be. Wow, I sound old now.

    • That phone is amazing. I especially love the creation of man image there, like it was at some point the height of technology? For a brief period in 2009 I was rocking a Motorola RAZR and I loved feeling like a 5-years-out-of-touch would-be baller.

  2. The phone douche thing. I have to try so hard. We are actually seriously contemplating having phone rules in our home so that we avoid the dreaded smart phone marriage.

  3. Be strong. It gets better.

    Although this is coming from someone who’s had her BlackBerry for almost two years and found on her last visit to the Verizon store, the day before your wedding, that she had used 14GB (or KB, or whateverthefuck) of her 750GB allowance the previous month. So…not exactly an expert, probably.

  4. Thanks for reminding me of the imminent threat of SkyNet.

    Just when the bad dreams had finally ceased.

  5. Ironically I’ve noticed a decrease in tweeting. I’m assuming this is because you haven’t sorted out a decent Windows Mobile Twitter application.

    • That might be part of it? I’ve actually been on my computer more than my phone the last few days, but busy writing things longer than 140 characters.

  6. A confession: I had a PDA before they had cell phone capabilities. I had a cell phone, but I never even charged it until I got my iPhone and fell in love. Because I hate, hate, hate talking on the phone, but I LOVE instant access to email, text, internet, camera and video.

    I’m an information junkie, and it wasn’t until someone combined my blackberry (yes, I had one of those way back in 2001 when it was just a pager-looking email device), my PDA, my camera, my phone and my alarm clock into one neat little package. I love it so, so, much. Tony and I sit on the sofa together watching television, me with my iPhone so that I can twitter chat, facebook, and IMDB to my heart’s content. It’s sad, but true.

    • I remember when my sister first got her job with Windows mobile I was like, “they’re putting Windows on cell phones now?” like it was the CRAZIEST THING IN THE WORLD. And then Apple made it huge and now Microsoft can enjoy ancillary benefits, which I think has been their business model for the last… forever? [SORRY, SORRY, SORRY! I'm a PC! Woo Microsoft! I love my Windows phone!]

  7. Yay Windows Phone!

  8. You will learn to hold the phone so you don’t hit the back button in time.

  9. Pingback: And Now Facebook Thinks I’m Lame | HitchDied

Leave a Reply to Sean G. Donaldson Cancel reply

Required fields are marked *.


Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.