Fun & Famous

PHONE HOME

by Maddy Stolk

No one can do without it anymore, without it we are hopelessly lost. It is a 24-hour news channel, an agenda, a messaging center, a camera, an email server, and occasionally a phone, because calling is so 2015.

Just like most people, I thought I was doing fine with my addiction until I had to hand in my smartphone. I belong to the unfortunate ones who have a model from the November 2015 batch, where the battery stops working at the most inconvenient times. Preferably in the middle of a crucial conversation where a work or relationship crisis needs to be resolved, or while trying to find an address in Kutkachelveen using Google Maps. There you are, in cow country, without GPS, without a phone, without any form of life. One could fall into an existential crisis from less.

After three failed appointments at the Genius Bar (oh, the irony), I was finally allowed to hand in my stuttering device to pick it up at the end of the day all fixed up (read: with a working battery, one that you paid 600 euros for a year ago).

Once outside, without a phone, the problems started almost immediately. I had an appointment, I still knew who with and at what time, but where? I couldn't call, couldn't email, couldn't check my agenda, I had to... think. And that wasn't easy. I quickly found a random passerby willing to lend me his phone, probably thanks to the wild look in my eyes, but he immediately regretted it when I first had to Google three possible locations and then call them; this appointment had already been rescheduled a few times, each time at a different location, and I didn't remember any of it. But no one picked up. I said it: calling is so 2015. I briefly considered running back into the Genius Bar to ask for my phone back, but that meant waiting another three weeks and begging for an appointment, so my common sense won over my rising mild panic.

So I took off running, and at the third location (Murphy and his law, of course) my fairly crucial appointment was waiting for me with barely concealed irritation. ‘No phone’ turned out to be the starting signal for half an hour of intense bonding over shared misery – no one can do without that device anymore.

Once back outside, I walked without a phone, but with my soul under my arm: being alone is still just being alone and unexpectedly ringing someone's doorbell in 2016 is only done by postmen with packages for the neighbors, and Jehovah's Witnesses who stuff a Watchtower in the mailbox if there is no answer.

It was a cold, gray, drizzly day – one of those days when it just doesn't seem to get light. So I aimlessly circled around the Leidseplein, like a tiger around her wounded cub, until I could pick up my prized possession. And then it happened.

‘It was busier than expected.’
‘There were some unforeseen problems.’
‘Not calculated quite right.’

And if I could come back the next day, because the batteries for the S-series were already out.

You understand, I couldn't wait for 2017. Now let's hope we won't be surprised by version 2016s.