This week I found my cell phone in the bottom of my purse clutching a tiny empty bottle of Valium and displaying the text message GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD. Rest in peace, valiant purple Motorola flip phone, and feast well in Valhalla.
So, I have to get a new cell phone, and I am facing a dilemma. I know that the days of having a plain flip phone with number keys are over, because people keep texting me, and texting them back takes me like twenty minutes without access to a keyboard. I am always tempted to call people back when they text me to expedite the proceedings, but then I never do, on the off chance that they are messaging me from a movie theater or a funeral. So, I surrender. I need a phone with letter keys. Really, I should get an iphone. Yet I pause at the threshold of such an acquisition, like a tremulous virgin unsure whether the man to whom she is about to give herself is the right one.
The iphone is a wondrous invention. Ever since my husband acquired one, his patience knows no bounds. Because of this thing, he can sit in perfect calm while I agonize for twenty minutes over whether I want the blue dress or the red one, while I get fidgety when he does the same thing with USB drives at Fry’s. He says I should get an iphone for the tranquility of our marriage, and I agree. So, why so much anguish and hand wringing? I do have a reason, but it makes me sound about 200 years old. Please loosen my corset, I feel I am about to suffer a paroxysm of the vapors.
When I am at home, I am almost never separated from the electronic teat that is my laptop. I keep it by me even when I watch television, should I want to look something up on google or read a funny article during a commercial break. The only time I am apart from the world’s sum of knowledge in aether form is when I leave the house. If I get an iphone, I will lose this last disconnect. The aether will literally be on me at all times, inescapable. Frankly, I fear this. There is a crotchety old lady inside me who insists that occasional boredom is good for the soul. Perhaps she is not entirely wrong. Why would I ever stare dreamily out the train window when I could have my nose in some engrossing app? My husband says that an iphone would be good for my writing because I could take notes whenever and wherever an idea strikes me. My response: but an idea will never strike me again! I will be too busy looking at LOLcats!
So, you see my quandary. But what quandary is that? My fate is inevitable. The aether reaches for me and already I feel myself swoon.
Elena Mauli Shapiro 