If I Could Show This to Everyone in the World...I Would

(caveat: I had no intention of writing anything more than a bit about the article that is linked below - something took over and I'm blaming the rain. Skip to the link if you like)

I had to buy a new cell phone the other day. My other phone has been doing the slow death dance, phone death by degrees. First it stopped charging. My phone guru gave me another charging thingy. It worked 3 times and then didn't. I went back to the old one and did this:

 How to Resuscitate A Cell Phone. Maybe.

Take the uncharging phone apart, unplugging its seemingly useless or maybe not charger cord, peeling off the rubber-like protective casing that goes over the hard plastic casing that goes over the actual phone. 

Slip a fingernail into the little slot to take off the backing, remove the battery. Stare at it awhile. Shake it gently. Pleasepleasepleaseplease, you might say.

Take the other battery that is now charged up and put it back in the phone 

Published 1914

(after I bought, from a helpful and all too understanding friend, her extra extra new battery because she has a phone just like mine, but not a problem like mine: her phone had other problems...like leaping into the sea. Her phones need a support group for harming themselves while in her possession. Or something to stop them from running away from home; they need a leash)

Reverse the process (be sure the phone is not upside down with the coverings) and prop the phone up on a pen/a pill bottle/a thin book/a slice of toast because it will finally charge, but only in a semi-upright position, as if being totally prone is killing it not softly. 

It will charge, but be ready because then it will uncharge. Again. 100%  bright and shiny with the last blink of closing eyes and in the morning, blocking out the sun, the first thing seen, it will be dead. 0 but lit. Gasping enough to give insane hope. Sort of dead. Perform PBR regularly.

I was afraid to answer the phone, because it was charged and if I touched it, it would uncharge. I spoke to people on the speaker, tapping it feather lightly, wondering, should I wear gloves - maybe it was my fingertips the phone disliked, maybe it was me. I felt stupid explaining why I was using the speaker 'My phone is rebelling. It hates me.' so I didn't. Much.  Easier to just not answer the phone.

Consuming way too much of my time, this phone. It was a colicky baby, an unhousetrained puppy, an unkillable mosquito in my ear. It was a demon laughing from phone hell eternity. If The Phone had been paying me by the hour for its attention, I could buy three iPhones. It was not an iPhone. It was a reverse whore. It still is.

It was time for a trade in.

credit: unknown

The new-to-me phone came in the mail yesterday, thank you Josh Fox, whoever you are. It has three extra batteries. It has two chargers that glow wonderfully green for charging and blue for charged, with the same unearthly glow of Skip Wilson's brand new 1970 Plymouth Satellite lit up dashboard gauges, a stoner's delight when the rest of the auto world was black and white. Woo.     Hoo.

It has ear buds, this new phone. It has a waterproof little bag. It has a rubbery case and a plasticky outer case. I marvel at all of its thrown in because Josh Fox is a good guy accessories, feeling like a little girl getting a Barbie doll with the house and the car and Ken and Midge and Skipper, the ultra shiny almost patent leathery pink case full of all her clothes and tiny high heel slippers, even the gold ones all at once instead of for every birthday and Christmas for 7 years. I only had one Barbie doll, the one with short brown curly hair, bubble head Barbie. She creeped me out, truthfully - I buried her. Literally. Raggedy Ann was much better; Barbie had no heart. This phone has four hearts, if I can keep them all beating.

My new not new phone and its entourage

Memories of Skip Wilson ~  RIP, Skip, coolest of surfer boys with your Carl Wilson hair

And then, with the powers of the internet, I read this article by Jonathan Safran Foer - the author of Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud among other books (which got really mixed reviews; I happened to hate it I loved it so much, like that) - that he wrote in the New York Times a few days ago. He said so eloquently everything I feel about cell phones/smart phones/too smart phones. Eloquently and farther up and further in (sorry, C.S. Lewis).

credit: unknown

I wanted to send it to my children and grandchildren. I wanted to send it to friends. I wanted to send it to everyone who owns any device that communicates, like this one that I am typing on right now. I wanted to send it to myself.

I wanted to copy it to this blog and then I thought, if you want to read it, you will. If you want to think about it, you will. If you want to act on it, you will. If you don't you won't.

Life sometimes is that simple. Even if (or when) I want to shove something into the brains and hearts of the people I love and the people I don't, I can't. Only myself, and toss the Shoved out as bread on the water. Maybe only seagulls or frigate birds, pelicans or terns will come. Slow learner that I am, I'm learning that's okay.

This rain better stop soon...

Have a telephone free Thursday. Do something talky talky.