Not Quite Cold Turkey!

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

NOT QUITE COLD TURKEY

As I am a card carrying member of the “We Have Too Much Stuff” brigade and am quick to bemoan the fact that life is full of gadgets, toys and gimmicks I often privately see myself as very similar to the fellow who is a beacon of perfection in church while “boozing and cruising” the other six days of the week.

I do like my gadgets.

I remember when we got our first television. I think I was six years of age. The family was pretty excited. In those days no one thought a family needed a TV in almost every room.

Another early memory was when we went from a “party line” to a “semi-private line” at our house and subsequently to a private line!

Wow. We went from 616-A, to 4839 to 412/ 568-2591.

None of us ever thought we would be walking around one day with a phone in our pocket.

I could carry these memories through microwaves, satellite dishes, washers and dryers (remember when you hung clothes outside to dry?), air conditioning, convection ovens, etc.

But lets just jump right to it.

My cell phone could easily be considered another of my vital organs. It accompanies me everywhere. When I misplace it I feel like I should be able to trigger something like an Amber Alert.

It occurred to me about a year ago that the tail was wagging the dog with reference to the phone. So in a moment of great personal strength I cancelled my voicemail!

Ok. It was a small step for mankind but a huge step for me!

Guess what.

I loved the lack of a gazillion messages to return every day. No one could leave me a message. I was no longer a slave to returning calls.

It was an incredible emancipation.

I only lost a dozen or so friends who simply could not deal with being unable to leave me a message.

Easy come.  Easy go.

I marched on in triumph over the “machine” for about six months. And then fate decided to give me a little push to go further. The push came in the form of my cellphone doing the backstroke in my bathroom. I will leave to your imagine the sordid details of how this little plunge into the water occurred. Mystery is always important in any story.

Immediately I went into panic mode. My cell did not work. No one could reach me. More importantly, I could not reach anyone. The fickle finger of fate had selected me for this horror.

I went into the military’s “Defcon 4” status. My laptop was working and I checked on what kind of CPR one should use for cellphone drowning.

It sent me to the grocer.

It seems a large bag of rice is required. Who knew?

The required period of intensive care for my cellphone was four days. Four days of resting covered completely by rice.

The withdrawal symptoms hit me immediately.

I sent out emails to all my contacts telling them I could no longer be reached on my cellphone. The direct result of this was a cessation of communication that was almost universal. Seems my contacts were as helpless without being able to phone me as I was at being unable to phone them.

A great and long period of isolation moved over me.

On the third day (!) my phone was resurrected. I pulled it out of the rice, being unable to wait another day, to find that all the icons, bells and whistles were back in action.

However, it would not hold a charge. Well, it would hold a full charge for about 5 minutes but after that it was “plug, plug, where is the plug.”

I panicked.

Immediately I contacted Apple to check on getting a new phone. They calmly advised me that I was ineligible for an upgrade until next July. Without an upgrade price we are talking about five hundred bucks or so!

No way.

Relying on my Boy Scout oath of many years ago-I decided to “Be Prepared.” I went through all the drawers and boxes where my wife and I throw things we might one day need and found a car charger and a few extra wall chargers.

My triage plan was to never be more than two feet away from a charger for my cell phone. I also doubled up on my Mophie devices so I would always have something pre-charged that I could use in an emergency.

So now in addition to having no voice mail I now only turn on my phone to check on “recent calls” so I can return those calls on our land line.

Further, my phone is in the permanent “off” mode except for a couple times a day when I hurriedly check out my emails or the news or stock quotes, running a race against the quickly fading battery life.

As the days passed I came to realize life does indeed go on without my cell phone. Instead of checking it every 15 minutes for emails and messages I get to it about three times a day now.

Instead of phoning family or friends when I am bored on a long drive I listen to music or books on tape.

The world moves on without my being able to utilize my cellphone.

And at the end of the day, I guess those “party lines” sixty years ago weren’t all that bad.

But today’s advice to the addicted is this: keep a box of rice handy.