No, Mike has not been posted overseas.
I am without my BBB (my beloved BlackBerry).
It has been ten weeks. Ten long weeks. The story itself is funny enough. A little day of shopping in Ottawa with Michelle. An inadvertent lean over a public toilet in IKEA wearing a hoodie with too-shallow pockets (curse you Bench). My BlackBerry nearly flushed. My phobia around public toilets and germs quickly erased as I plunge my hand into its swirling depths to rescue my beloved. Water does permanent and irreparable damage to these cherished devices.
So what now? Did I run right out and replace beloved? Ah...beloved cannot be replaced so easily (not for reasons of nostalgia....I'm just too cheap to fork over the $500 required to buy such a device when I still have 24 months in a pricey contract).
For a trip to NYC, I marched into Telus demanding the cheapest data device. You get what you pay for. The HTC Touch phone operating on Windows was a sad and sorry replacement. I returned it as soon as I was back on Canadian soil.
I have tried to be resourceful. I want another BlackBerry but I don't want to pay hundreds for it. I have entered contests. I have pleaded with Telus, online, offline and in my dreams. I have checked Ebay for some ridiculous deal but apparently many other people have flushed their phones and need to replace them.
So I resigned myself. What would life be life without a cell phone? I read a Mark Kingswell essay this morning and his comment on technology suited me: "...But most of us, in thoughtful moments, realize that technology is entirely devoid of interest unless it makes some aspect of daily life easier or more interesting..."
Not having a cell phone has given me many more thoughtful moments. The only person it really inconveniences is Mike. And he'll get over it.
Have we all been lulled into thinking we NEED these devices? Are we willing to pay so dearly for convenience. Why are we so loathe to be a wee bit inconvenienced? And all these apps...are they just further distractions from being in the moment?
I'm going to see how long I can go. But that doesn't mean I don't still dream about my beloved. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...................
Lol, love this post! So you ask: "Are we willing to pay so dearly for convenience. Why are we so loathe to be a wee bit inconvenienced? And all these apps...are they just further distractions from being in the moment?"
ReplyDeleteI think we instill to much into believing that our reality, our present time is "THE" Time..........
During the bubonic plague, sneezing was thought to be an early symptom of the plague. The blessing ("God bless you!") became a common effort to halt the disease....so you wonder what is the correlation?
Even though its not physical it is valuable, we could care less today about God Bless You, and believe you me, in 590 AD they could care less about BB. Nothing is distracting us except us....Time is flowing and we are to ;)