Life, Death & iPhone
My cell phone died. It coughed and sputtered. The iPhonic wheel of death spun on its face for 6 hours overnight as it hummed on my bed stand. My clients, contacts had not been backed up in a month, iCloud was a fog to me. What was my schedule for next week? I hadn’t been keeping up with inserting phone numbers into my Roladex on my desk, that took too much time. My iPhone was an appendage, an assistant, my organizer, my everything. Surely it was a fluke and it would recover by daylight. I would take it into the Apple store and develop a story as to why there were remnants of Diet Coke in its intestine, that it was not my Diet Coke, but that of my 6 year old daughter who begged to take it with us in the car as she had worked so hard on her recipe of soda and Splenda. The car was dark. The Diet Coke was in my cup holder. The Diet Coke was dark. My iPhone was thirsty.
I woke and reached for my iPhone, it was dead. I could almost feel its presence in the room beckoning from the light. I rose without the usual ritual of checking my email, Facebook, Twitter and various news apps. I had no idea if the world was about to collapse or if anyone liked last night’s status update. The only thing I had to focus on was waking my children, scouting for dog nuisance in the christened dawn, and making the perfect cup of coffee. I thought I would be more panicked that my lifeline had gone to the digital graveyard in the ethosphere. Yet I found myself secretly snickering, like a sewage collector who suddenly develops a fever and must call in sick. I felt liberated, and guilty for feeling liberated. The irony struck that the device which offered so much freedom, the ability work anywhere at anytime, had suddenly become a bit of a gilded cage.
I was a teenager who’s parents left town for the weekend. My newfound freedom brought an excuse to run errands without anyone ever knowing. No one could call and ask where I was. I was going off. My list of to-dos running an envelope-long danced on my console. I checked each off as though a medal waited for me at the customer service at PetCo. A 10am car wash loaned 30 minutes of wait time. I began to twitch. My hand involuntarily began to reach repetitively into my pocket, my purse, for my iPhone. I was officially jonesing, the crack addict of iPhone users. If I could just hold an iPhone, just swipe the face, just unlock something with my code, it would go away. My brain churned in a frantic whirl of desperation for something to quell its angst. The earlier moments of bliss had been replaced with visions of using the cell of a passer-by just to update my status because a really good one was brewing.
Then I saw it. It laid there on a black iron stack staring at me. It was a newspaper. I reached for it, the man at the register stopped me. “Are you sure you want THAT newspaper? It’s from Sunday, it’s Wednesday, old news by now.” I reached for the paper, that big fat Times Sunday Edition with blazing headlines, the Arts section meekly sneaking through the fattened advertising inserts. “This is exactly what I was looking for”, I responded, plopping my new 3 pound app on the counter. It was old news, but it was my news.
I pulled a chair in to the sun peeking from behind the eave of the lube shop. Its rays bathing us, the newspaper sat on my thighs, warming me, as I began to leaf its pages. Life riding a bike, the familiar routine quickly returned to my fingers. This relic of script did not reflect in my eyes, it had no screen with smudges and no arrow to scroll with. The headlines were the same as on my iPhone, but somehow they translated differently. Instead of scrolling through articles at a sonic rate, I gravitated to the headlines, giving them each an opportunity to speak. Stories that would have been lost in a haze of sleepy eyes and clicks were now alive in my hands at a carwash under a magnificent rays in the aroma of escaping fuel. It was perfect. I learned about a 21 year old girl who had struggled with a rare Pediatric disorder that took her ability to all but breath. It followed her family embracing her as she fell to its grip as they removed her from the ventilator. She stayed alive longer than any doctor could have imagined. The family slept by her side, read to her, embraced her, painted her toes and brought in her favorite Dachshund to sleep at her feet. I cried. Tears fell like stones onto my new friend in my lap, a friend I had ignored for something sexier, faster, easier to put away. I would not have stopped to read this article had I seen it on my phone.
Next were the Obituaries. With PMS in high gear and stained cheeks I found this to be the appropriate transition. I learned about a man who died at the age of 62. It did not say much about his life or how he passed, but that he was loved. He married his sweetheart at the age of 24 and moved to California from Idaho. I found myself wanting to know more about him. I read every section of the paper that day, every article, and I cared about what I read.
Why did it take the severing of a digital lifeline for me to be reminded that reading a newspaper can affect your entire day? We know the art of the newspaper is being lost to technological advancements, we see it everywhere in the headlines, it’s a new day and we must change with the “times”. How ironic is it that the name of the newspaper is also its demise.
The man in the blue collared shirt and rag in his pocket whistled into the air announcing my car was ready. I stood, collecting and arranging my friend into an organized stack. Although my fingers were darker, my heart was lighter, I looked down at her texture and print and laid her on the chair, to wait for a life that will change for a moment, because she was there.
There are a few basic things you need to know before you take the leap.
