Ode to my iPhone

The last two days have seemed to revolve around the iPhone. Yesterday while Red and I were having dinner, she told me about how she was going to get an iPhone. She was telling me about a particularly harrowing experience where she was very lost, well beyond the witching hour and would have sold her first born for a phone with GPS.

Excited to help induct her into our cult, we made a bee line for the nearest AT&T store. As soon as we walked in, I was bamboozled by the sleek, glittery displays. I think I was more excited than she was. We waited our turn and as we approached the counter, a surly looking man informed us that they were sold out of the smaller 16G size that Red was thinking about getting. I spent a good four minuets trying to talk her into the larger 32G size. I told her how I have the 16G size of the older model and it is full to the brim. I wish I had more space. I have to be choosy about what makes the cut to go everywhere with me and what does not. Not fully trusting my advice, she called Frankie and discussed the matter with him. He said she only would need the 16G. He totally vetoed me. I dropped her off at her car without a brand-new, shiny phone. Not to worry, it will come though.

This morning I got up and finished listening to Harry Potter 4 on my iPhone and was ready to download Harry Potter 5 before I left for work. I synced up and went about getting ready. When I came back to it, it was downloading a software update. Ugh. I got dressed, did my hair, and when I came back it still was not done. I had to leave for work, so in my infinite wisdom, I unplugged it when it clearly said on the screen so that I could take it with me. I have done this other times, and it was fine. It just did not put the new songs on, or did not sync my calendar, and I would just do it when I returned home. Oh, that was the wrong answer today.

After I unplugged it, it just gave me a bleak picture of a the plug and the iTunes symbol. It would not get me to the home screen. Yikes! No problem, I will just plug it back in and it will finish what it was doing while I was at work. On my way to lunch, I stopped by my house and picked my phone up. I was horrified to realize that it was completely wiped, like it was straight out of the box. There was not a single contact, not a single appointment, not a single song. AH! What did I do to my sweet, sweet phone? Poor thing. My iPhone pretty much is part of my life now. It wakes me up in the morning, always at the right time because it is smart enough to be programmed to wake me at different times on different days. While I get ready, I listen to a book on tape or jam out to any of the thousands of songs it holds. All day at work it is my life line to the outside world. Denied access to Facebook, and clocked for all internet time, my iPhone allows me to connect behind Big Brother’s back. When boredom sets in, we can pass and play Scrabble. When a conversation refers to someone new that my coworkers don’t know yet, I can look up their picture for the girls. On my way home, I check where I am supposed to be that night. On my way there, I can talk on my phone through my car speakers, shoot a quick text to say I am almost there, or look up what that stupid gate code that I can never remember is. It helps me find a Sonic when I am craving a soda, or help me send a postcard while I am out of town, and tells me what song is playing in the Gap.

In the book The Golden Compass, every person soul resides outside the body in an animal-like form called a Dæmon. A person’s Dæmon can only stray a short distance of from their person and forcibly separating a person from his or her Dæmon causes unimaginable physical and emotional pain for both entities. I think Dæmon is in the form of an iPhone. All day I have been missing the familiar weigh in my scrub pocket. After lunch I returned home to plug it back in. I can only hope that when we are reunited that my iPhone will no longer be the blank stranger that I took to lunch to me, but will again return to manifestation of my soul.