My Blackberry died over the weekend and it took a couple of days for my replacement to arrive. As soon as it died, I was overcome with anxiety as I wasn’t exactly sure how to behave without my constant connection to the outside world. What was I going to do with myself if I couldn’t salivate like Pavlov’s dog every time the little red light came on signifying that I was important because someone else who also has no life (sorry, no offense) was also working over the weekend and sending me emails.
I plugged into the house charger and all I got was a black screen and blinking red lights that promised so much but delivered so little. The car charger was no better and the lights mocked me as if they knew that I was frantic over the thought that someone might be trying to reach me and I was inaccessible. I tried taking the battery out and putting it back in, but no luck. While it was on the car charger, every stop sign I’d reach over and push the on button hoping that somehow it had magically been resuscitated and now was going to work. No luck no matter how long I left the button pushed in.
Getting out of the car, I put it in my pocket by habit hoping that somehow being close to me would make it realize how much I needed my crackberry fix. No luck, my body heat did not magically reinvigorate my poor dead little crackberry. I choked back the tears and realized that somehow, I would have to be strong and go on without my little friend and that whoever was frantically trying to get ahold of me would have to wait until I was accessible via those most ancient of tools: a laptop and a landline.
As the day wore on, I found myself reaching in my pocket less and less as I slowly accepted that I was going to be Crackberry-less until at least Monday. Suddenly work didn’t seem so important as I surveyed the world outside of the crackberry and realized that there were many beautiful things in the world that didn’t come on a two by three screen. I thought to myself that I should take a picture of these wonders to always remind myself that life is more than a Crackberry. I reached inside my pocket and then I remembered that not only could I not get email or phone calls, I also couldn’t take pictures and send them instantly to my friends.
I sank to my knees in the snow (okay, this is a slight exaggeration) as the horror of it all sank in and I realized that life would not be the same until that 133 gram wonder of modern technology was once again back in my pocket tethering me to the my friends, family, work, twitter, etc. etc. etc.
Okay, now that you’ve read my horror story, I have to confess that after the first day or so I really did get used to not having constant access to my email and phone and felt a strange kind of bliss at knowing that I was disconnected. It was actually harder to live without the camera as I’d gotten used to being able to snap pictures of the kids, things I wanted to blog about, or the dog instantly. So even though there were some blissful disconnected moments, I ‘m feeling much more blissful now that my crackberry is back in my pocket.
Cairn by Cairn 