"Can you hear me now?"
Word count: 3413
I know I know. All this time, in my jacket's inside pocket, my cell phone, just sitting there, waiting for me to use it. Why didn't I think of that right away? I didn't even bother to look at it. It used to be that when a plotline demanded that a person or group of people be cut off from society and any hope of rescue, the phone lines would be cut. Before that it was that the bridge had been washed out. Before that, I don't know, the fire for the smoke signals had gone out or something. My point being that even with all our advancements in technology, we'll still find ways to be cut off, feeding into one of our greatest fears as a species: being out of touch. Every now and then, you'll hear people rail against cell phones saying, "I don't want to be constantly connected to people," or, "I don't want people to be able to get in touch with me all the time," but you know that's bullshit. We need that kind of contact, and those people know they don't have to always answer the phone. They can claim the newest of technological malfunctions: the loss of signal.
So, I wish I could say that at some point during the last couple hours, I had thought to look at my phone and I wish I could say that when I looked at it, it was just blindly searching for a signal, or that the battery had drained completely due to my lack of foresight and failure to charge it.
Neither of these things are true. And I'm just an idiot.
This is what I get for buying that super-slim, ultra-light, nearly-nonexistent phone that all the 16-year-old girls would put silver sequins on and the boys would buy in black if only they could see the thing but you need an electron microscope just to dial the numbers. And this is what I have, in my jacket pocket, vibrating the weakest little buzz against my chest, like an anorexic hummingbird's death rattle.
I know I know. All this time, in my jacket's inside pocket, my cell phone, just sitting there, waiting for me to use it. Why didn't I think of that right away? I didn't even bother to look at it. It used to be that when a plotline demanded that a person or group of people be cut off from society and any hope of rescue, the phone lines would be cut. Before that it was that the bridge had been washed out. Before that, I don't know, the fire for the smoke signals had gone out or something. My point being that even with all our advancements in technology, we'll still find ways to be cut off, feeding into one of our greatest fears as a species: being out of touch. Every now and then, you'll hear people rail against cell phones saying, "I don't want to be constantly connected to people," or, "I don't want people to be able to get in touch with me all the time," but you know that's bullshit. We need that kind of contact, and those people know they don't have to always answer the phone. They can claim the newest of technological malfunctions: the loss of signal.
So, I wish I could say that at some point during the last couple hours, I had thought to look at my phone and I wish I could say that when I looked at it, it was just blindly searching for a signal, or that the battery had drained completely due to my lack of foresight and failure to charge it.
Neither of these things are true. And I'm just an idiot.
This is what I get for buying that super-slim, ultra-light, nearly-nonexistent phone that all the 16-year-old girls would put silver sequins on and the boys would buy in black if only they could see the thing but you need an electron microscope just to dial the numbers. And this is what I have, in my jacket pocket, vibrating the weakest little buzz against my chest, like an anorexic hummingbird's death rattle.
posted by adam at 10:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home