Not that I wouldn’t mind returning to a world without selfies. There was a lot to be said for that place.
But I am just as bad as everyone else when it comes to feeling out of touch if I don’t have my iPhone with me. One day, I was driving to a meeting across town and realized my phone was on my desk. I didn’t have time to go back and get it, but I did have time to swing by my house to tell my husband that he wouldn’t be able to reach me for an hour or so.
If there was an emergency, he’d have to contact me the old-fashioned way—by calling the meeting venue and having staff page me.
I am amazed that I feel this way. After all, I grew up in a household with one landline. My parents built our home, and there was a kitchen desk in a nook that was designated specifically for the telephone. You couldn’t even take the phone with you when you were at home, never mind on the road.
When we were on a motor-home trip out west and the camper broke down, my father hitched a ride with a truck driver to the nearest service station. He did come back alive, believe it or not.
In 1978, I was in college in Providence, RI, about 15 miles from my parents’ home in southeastern Massachusetts. A major snowstorm was forecast, and I didn’t feel like braving it out in my drafty apartment. After my last class ended at 1 p.m., I hopped into my trusty 1963 Ford Falcon—“The Tank”—and headed home.
The snow fell thickly and furiously from the start. I barely made it down the interstate. I exited into my hometown, turned into a shopping center and came to a dead halt in ever-deepening and unplowed snow.
Channeling Nanook of the North, I fought my way through the blizzard (for this was a blizzard) to a pay phone. I called my father. He said, “I knew you were going to try to get home.”
He knew that through a gut sense; I had no way to call him from the car. He came and got me in his truck, but the car was stuck—along with thousands of others in southern New England—for over a week.
Had I a cell phone at the time, I surely would have called my parents and told them my plans. They may have told me to stay put—although the weather forecasters did anticipate the severity of the storm. I was lucky I did not get stuck in my car, as so many others did. Nobody could call anybody for help.
Suffice it to say that nowadays I would never think to undertake such a trek without a cell phone, and not just because I’m smarter than I was back then. Something in my brain has changed.
I do not use my phone obsessively to communicate. I see it as a security device. When I traveled alone to Boston for a conference last winter, I was able to keep my husband, Paul, apprised of my whereabouts through texting. I’m not sure what he would have done if I’d called him and said I’d been kidnapped by a taxi driver. But I liked the thought that I could.
Although I lived for many years knowing that if I broke down on the road it wouldn’t be a fun experience (and could possibly be a dangerous one), I am glad to have my phone so I can call AAA without standing out in the breakdown lane, waving for help and getting run over.
Also, it is comforting to know when someone you are expecting is stuck in traffic. When I was a teenager in the 1970s, my parents rented a cottage on Cape Cod every summer. One year they drove up to Bourne to meet two of my cousins, who were coming up to visit. They were going to lead the girls down to our rental in the town of Falmouth.
The Bourne Bridge is often a bottleneck of traffic bound for the Cape on busy weekends. Although we knew this, my sister and I worried when our parents didn’t return in an hour. Then two hours. Then three. By that time we were up at the intersection where our side road met the highway, anxiously scanning for them. If they’d had a mobile phone, they could have called us.
Which is what Paul was able to do in the 21st century when, bringing our parents up from Massachusetts for a visit, he ran into one of the classic traffic jams that happen at the northbound tollbooths when too many people strive to get into Vacationland at the same time.
I do use my phone to take photographs, and the ease of doing so means I take more pictures than I used to. I use it to answer any question I might have about anything, including what band is playing some obscure hit from the 70s on the radio. I do post on Facebook. I text once in a while. But I don’t like the way I look in selfies, so those just don’t happen.
While I worry that our young people are losing their social skills by spending too much time connecting virtually with others, and abhor the culture of narcissism the selfie stick has spawned, I do love my iPhone. Don’t ever try to take it from me. I don’t remember how to live without it.
No comments:
Post a Comment