Losing one’s cellphone

For a literary journalism piece for my creative non-fiction class, I had pitched back in the end of November to possibly write about what it would be like to live without my cellphone for a few weeks in December.  I had had this feeling of losing contact with everyone and resorting to using my home phone like old times; I was 19 when I got my first cellphone, and my friends all sighed with relief when it happened, knowing they could finally contact me and not have to talk to my mother at home anymore.  And although having a cellphone has its obvious advantages, it’s also, at least for me, had the opposite effect– it has distanced me from people.  I will text someone and they will never respond.  In this day and age, we’ve been unofficially trained to simply accept this as an everyday occurrence.  But I didn’t feel like I belonged to the present day of all this stupidity (I still feel like that now too).  Unfortunately, I never got around to doing the project because I came up with the Zero Waste idea (but I did cut down on my use/attachment with my phone, which was already low to begin with).

Today, while on a date, I dropped my phone somewhere in a park.  Although we walked on the path to try and find it, we knew someone would find it because the trail was fairly wide, so it couldn’t have fallen in the ditch, and my phone would’ve been very noticeable against the gravel of the path.  When I got home, an elderly couple had found my phone and had placed it in their mailbox for me to pick up.  On the way home and for the rest of the evening, I had the urge every now and then to text or call a friend, knowing that I couldn’t.  What a liberating feeling, to not be tied to your phone like that.  For some people, they are so attached their devices that they physically go through withdrawal symptoms if they’re severed from their gadgets, but I’m not like that at all.  And it’s a good feeling to have.

I feel superior.

Incidentally, my mother was quite upset/angry with me for losing it, as if she was the one who lost it, saying things like how I’m a dumbass for always losing my phone (I have never lost my phone before).  But that’s my mother.  Such a kind and warm individual.