cell phone interference

You should all know that the hypocritical side of me absolutely adores my cell phone. There has been maybe two other decisions I've made that were more important than the one to obtain the palm sized mixture of plastic, metal, wires, and battery that make up the device that has made a huge impact on the way I live my life. Life altering impact. Surely. How many of you can testify to at least more contact (if not by leaps and bounds, but surely more than ever) from yours truly, the sort that email just cannot be substituted for?

Yep. That's impact.

Well the day I was terrified would arrive, the one that often accompanied sinewy dreams in which I search and search and cannot find the thing I am looking for, a day I knew was crawling alongside me like a squished and regenerating worm, slowly waiting for the day it would overtake me, it has come, just two days ago, on the briskly chilly morning of Tuesday.

Why now, why today have I begun to write about that day?

It is not the hindsight I have gained, no, it is the sheer frustration and panic borne of that day that builds with each day, hour, and minute in which I cannot make a phone call on my cell phone.

We've all had a watch adorn our wrists for months, weeks, or days, only to lose it to some defect or lack of self-discipline, and still continue to glance at the naked wrist, over and over until the knowledge finally sinks in and begins to break the habit.

Today, I have been broken.

Maybe there was a part of me that was sort of defiant. Like, ha, so what, I can't use my cell phone. I don't need it anyway, I shrugged. I don't use it that much, I boasted. I don't care, I lambasted to the automated voice that intercepted my call to my voicemail.

So what, I can't call my friends and family. They know where to find me. (As proof, I got a phone call from my best friend Deanna just last night at home on the telephone...) And I'll get paid soon and it'll get turned back on and just be a brief break from the whimsical and capricious world of the cell phone. Maybe I would bother Eric less, rather than call him the second something crossed my mind. A relief, perhaps it was, to me and others, to interfere in my cell phone service.

And then, as I aggressively stomped between the white lines of a crosswalk, my step faltered and I remembered that the application I'd handed in for the Columbia Chronicle had my cell phone all over it, and that they were supposed to call me this week and hadn't called before The Day of Interference.

But then again, part of the reason for my lack of fundage to pay cell phone bills is largely due to my participation in the great land of matriculation and anyone hoping to take on a rogue bill payer as a student writer for the school newspaper would be remorseful in overlooking me for this reason alone...

eep.

And so, the cell phone that I haughtily declared was needless reminds me again of its inclusion in my life, the thing that I had heedlessly embraced is gone, and its effects are not inconsequential.

I promise to call next week.