Cell Phone Breakup

Because I’m normal, I spend a lot of time with my smart phone.  It’s gotten pretty serious.  I mean, we go everywhere together, and I can’t stand being apart from it, even for a few minutes.  When I go to sleep, my phone is right next to me, sleeping on the night stand, always there for me.  And I’m always there for it.

But, as important as my smart phone is to me, I know in the back of my mind that I’ll dump it for a smarter, sexier one in two years.  My smart phone doesn’t know this, and I haven’t had the heart to tell it.  I’m not entirely sure how it would react.   Plus, things are complicated by my phone knowing quite a bit about me, including my credit card number and what I say to my family and friends.  I suspect it would start blackmailing me, unless of course I wipe its memory (which I will).  Harsh perhaps, but then I’ve always been a heart breaker.

Now that I’ve acquired everyone’s sympathy, I think it’s only fair that I share my past phone relationships so I can feel like I’ve redeemed my past sins.

They say everyone remembers their first, and I’m no exception.  It was an older phone, which I’m sure is bound to cause some controversy, but it did have its perks.  The phone sat on a table next to a couch, with little to no fanfare.  People could be in the same room as it and not know it was there.  My parents still have this phone, and I always feel awkward whenever I’m in the same room as it.  When we visit my parents, my kids play with it a lot, and I’m content to let them.  I don’t want to needlessly complicate their lives, and they’re too young to understand anyway.

But, something was always missing.  I couldn’t really leave the couch; its cord kept me tethered.  I was never the sort of person that liked to be tied down in a relationship, but when you don’t have anything to compare with your current phone, you tend to be content.  It may sound harsh, but I realized that I needed to be my own person, no matter how much that phone had done for me.  So I committed the first of many sins: I started talking with other phones.

Though I was stuck in that relationship for longer than I wanted, my life changed when I met my first cordless phone.  I finally had the taste of the freedom I had so desperately coveted, but I had to go to my friend’s house to experience it.  My home phone never asked why I was out more often than I had been, but I could tell that it suspected I had something on the side.  I still talked on my home phone, but the spark just wasn’t there anymore.  We both knew things had changed, but neither of us wanted to talk about it.

When my parents got a cordless phone for our house, I was unable to control my enthusiasm.  Now I could roam around the house untethered.  I felt like a bird that had finally been let out of its cage, at last able to fully extend its wings and rise into a new and exciting world.

My parents still had the original home phone in its usual place, but I found myself using it less and less.  Despite my newfound enthusiasm for the cordless, I couldn’t bring myself to fully cut the cord between my first phone and me.  It pains me to admit that I used the old phone when the cordless needed to charge.  I think the old phone knew I was using it, but sometimes we prefer to be used because we can at least believe that we serve a purpose, no matter how sad and pathetic that purpose may be.

Struggles with the original phone aside, the cordless and I had a long, fulfilling relationship.  I still went out to be with other phones, perhaps a bit more than occasionally, but I think the cordless understood that sometimes I needed a break.  I’m not proud of my infidelity, but I always came back to that cordless, and it knew that it was the one I truly cared about.

Moving to college did change things though.  Long distance relationships aren’t always the best, and this proved to be the case with me.  I picked up a younger, fitter cordless on the first day of college, feeling no guilt.

Not surprisingly, my home cordless and my first home phone commiserated with each other, finally having something in common: both left behind by someone they thought cared about them.  I like to think that my first cordless had prepared for the emotional trauma, but we didn’t talk as much anymore, and I was too cowardly to broach the subject.

My college cordless had the time of its life; I made sure of that.  We were together a lot, and even my roommate felt that I’d found true happiness.  But all good things do come to an end, and they certainly did when I laid my eyes on a cell phone.  Infidelity had reared its ugly head again, but I finally had real freedom.  No longer would I have to stay in the same twenty-foot radius to be with my cordless.  Now I could roam all around the country, all around the world!

But like the scoundrel I was, I still kept my college cordless, even being so cruel as to charge my new cell phone next to it.  I do feel bad for how I acted.  Really, I do.  At least my home cordless had the old home phone to share its sorrows with, but my college cordless had no one.  I think it talked to my cell phone on a few occasions, but there was always that stilted awkwardness that made everyone feel embarrassed.

Eventually, there were the smart phones.   They knew more about me than my other phones put together.  When a relationship gets that serious, it truly is something special.  You can probably guess the rest though…There was always another cell phone.

Worst of all, I got too much enjoyment when wiping my old cell phones’ memories, but there’s a part of me that just can’t feel completely fine with it.  Sure, I rationalize that sometimes one must be cruel to be kind, but knowing that I’m responsible for removing my phones’ memories hurts, particularly on those late Friday nights when I’m out with my current smart phone.  Sometimes in my dreams I see the blank expressions on those wiped phones as they look around like lost puppies trying to find their mothers.  They look at me with a faint glint of recognition, but the look fades like a dying star, and the hope slowly gives way to despair as the cell phone sales associates take them back into storage.

I won’t say that I’m a good person.  In fact, I know I’m not.  You may not believe me, but despite all I’ve done, I still love all of my phones just as much as the first day I met them.

Follow me in a completely non-creepy way:

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