A number of weeks ago I was wrestling on my family room floor with Myron, my 17-month-old son, when I heard a sound like a cracking knuckle. Seconds later my cell phone was out of my back pocket and staring at me with a spider-webbed display screen. Thing was crunched, yo. Again.
I tend to go through about a cell phone a year. This one was a slim Motorola that I bought 12 months ago to replace the flip Nokia that broke while I was remodeling my bathroom (ladder, tile floor, dropped on). The one before that disappeared one day, possibly having run away to find an owner who took better care of it. Which is to say, anyone. I drop them, I lose them, I step on them. Probably, word has spread about me among cell phones. They're frightened of me, now. They flinch when they hear my name. Guantanemo Bay, the Spanish Inquistion and waterboarding are all things to which cell phone pundits have warned other cell phones are as bad as being owned by me.
Well, replacing the dead cell phone inspired all sorts of angst. Should I buy some cheap cell phone and then wait for the iPhone to come to Canada? Should I buy an unlocked iPhone? Should I go to the States and buy an iPhone there and then go to that store just off Lippincott where the dude unlocks the iPhone for $60? That sounded a bit sketchy. At that point, my ability to procrastinate grew stronger than any necessity to buy a cell phone.
While I mulled over my options I spent several weeks dialing wrong numbers two-thirds of the time because I couldn't see what I was doing. Because, you may have heard, I broke my cell phone. After three weeks this grew so frustrating that I stopped using it. I just left it on this little shelf we have in the front hall. I started using my home phone again. I grew ridiculously hard to reach. It was kind of nice, really.
Eventually I decided I'd buy a cheap cell phone and use that until the iPhone came out in Canada. Then I realized that shitty unlocked cell phones cost as much as shitty unlocked BlackBerrys. So I went to those computer stores at College and Spadina and bought a crappy old BlackBerry, figuring I'd try it out until the arrival of the iPhone. It wasn't until I had the thing home that I realized what I had become. Which is to say, someone who owns a BlackBerry.
Taking into account all of the generalizations that go along with People Who Own BlackBerries, I hereby make the following resolutions:
1. I promise I will not all of a sudden start wearing khaki pants all the time.
2. I promise I will not ever wear my BlackBerry on my belt, in a holster.
3. I promise my BlackBerry will never be the first thing I reach for when I deplane. For that matter, I promise I will never again use the word "deplane." When I get off a plane.
4. For that matter, again, I promise never to refer to the device as a "BlackBerry." My phone, my cell phone, my trusty two-way communicator, that thing in my jacket pocket -- all these labels: yes. BlackBerry: no.
Having said all that, I have to admit something: I love my trusty two-way communicator. I go on my laptop a couple of times a day to check my e-mail, and when I do I also tend to check various gossip blogs and current events web sites and online video pages and next thing you know my quick e-mail check has eaten 20 minutes or more. Now that I have email on my phone I can just glance at it and devote the rest of the time to more serious pursuits. Like wrestling on my family room floor with Myron.
