It all happened so quick. My puppy peed on my floor. I did my best to get her outside whilst cleaning up her accident. Then it happened. My caseless phone fell flat on the screen on the splintered hardwood flooring on my house.
A few expletives later, the mess was clean, my puppy had calmed and I went to grab my phone. However, my phone had decided to spite me by having some rad blue lines all across the screen. It still worked and everything, now I just had the pleasure of looking at peculiar blue lines that certainly had no place being on my homescreen. If only I knew that those blue lines represented the demise of my phone.
About two weeks after that fateful drop, my screen had turned black. “Stellar,” I groaned in the middle of my rhetoric lecture. I took it to the local phone repair service and asked for a new screen. I came back about 45 minutes later to pick up my hot new screen, but to find out that it was more than the screen. It was the backlight chip, or something, that had burst in my phone. And of course, with my luck, they didn’t do that repair. My options were between getting a new phone or having the repair service ship it to Texas for repair. I went with the latter, with the catch being I would be without a phone for about two weeks.
Off the grid (kind of) for two whole weeks. A hell beyond my 16-year-old sister’s most gruesome imaginations. I somehow managed. Here is what I took from my two weeks without my pocket computer.
Breathe, just breathe.
Honestly, it was therapeutic. I didn’t feel the need to check my phone every five minutes. I focused in classes better. I started going for walks just for fun. It was great. Not having a phone and just being a human person was great.
We aren’t important.
Really, not checking my phone constantly taught me that no one really cares about us as individuals. Well, of course people do. But the concept that we are an important individual is really contrived. Approximately five people outside of my mom and dad needed me for something during the two weeks. I really had thought it would be more, but the experience was humbling in a sort of depressing way.
The government couldn’t find me.
OK, they totally could if they wanted to but I feel better about being at least a little harder to track down.
I don’t want it back.
And to an extent, I got exactly that. After 12 days, I picked up my phone and was pretty stoked about it. About 10 hours later, I dropped it in a urinal. The universe hates me.
Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
