Proverbs 15, Verse 21
"If a man enjoys folly, something is wrong!
The sensible stay on the pathways of right."
CHIPPED WISDOM:
Can you hear me now?
Meet my new cellphone. Say "hi," cellphone. That's-a-boy.
So, I'm rebelling. I was talking to an old friend who I hadn't seen in years and we were talking about youth and rebellion, and how youth rebel, you know, against their parents, their clergy, their trousers, their eyebrows, typically at around 15 or 16-- when things get hormonal and abnormal and rebellious and tempestuous.
Horny.
We get horny for autonomy. We want to speak and decide and drive and talk and stomp up to our rooms and write angry letters and get up all the bile and excoriate and expectorate. That's what we want.
Anyway, we were talking about how we didn't rebel. "I'll admit," she said as we all drove to a diner together, "I became a real-- well, I don't want to say it in front of your babies..."
"You became a real BEE-YATCH?" I suggested.
She smiled. "Yeah, that."
But that's not rebellion. And I became a bit of a bee-yatch, too, but I didn't rebel. Not against my parents. Why would I? I had the perfect upbringing. Sure, they may have minimized my need for psychiatric intervention in my teens, but what upper-middle-class Jewish parents in suburban Pennsylvania don't do that?
Right?
I am, however, rebelling now. Against what, I don't know. Technology? Facebook? Screen time? Intrusion? Obsession? The disgusting forsaking of those I love for some endorphin kick that surges every time my phone makes a BLIP or a BLONG?
I have an iPhone 4. It's not the latest and greatest, and it certainly isn't GOLD YOU FUCKING MANIACS WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU but it's sleek and slim and it's fast and in my yellow and blue Otterbox it looks like I'm walking around with a little Ikea store on my hip and I'm always scrolling and strolling and streaming and screaming and flipping and blipping and maximizing and supersizing and I FUCKING HATE IT.
I hate me.
And, of course, I hate you, too. Because you seduce me. You take me away from my wife and my children. Hell, you even take me away from me. Not that I'm that great, but still. Sometimes I want to just be. With me. With my disturbing and depraved thoughts, and some of the innocent ones, too. I still have some of those sometimes. I think. I don't know.
I am obsessed with checking my work email on my phone. I check it when I'm in the bathroom. At work. I'm away from my desk for two minutes and I check my work email on my phone. That's disgusting. That's diagnosable. That's DSM-V. That's not so good.
And I've tried limiting myself. I've tried. I even deleted the Facebook App from my phone. I'm tried self-governance, but I'm not a very good leader, even of myself. So, I'm taking it a step further.
The Nokia 6061.
It has... a red light on the cover that flashes when you get a call. I think it flashes when you get a text too. It does text. I will still be texting. Just, you know, not as fast. Or as lengthy. And that's okay. I'm kind of verbose, and that can be annoying in the textosphere.
I don't want to be annoying anymore.
There's no camera. There's no touchscreen. Apparently, it's as big as a pack of gum. Let me buy you a pack and I'll show you how to chew it.
It is capable of receiving email and browsing the Outernetz, but I won't be setting that up. No, thank you. I sit at a fucking computer all goddamn day long, from 6:15am-3:00ish. And then I have this dumb desktop at home. I'm good with that. And, if I want to take pictures-- well, the Nokia 6061, um, it can't do that. But I have a digital camera. Isn't that what people used in 2006, when this phone was made? The year I got married. That was a good year. I figure, if I can deal with driving a car from 2001, I can handle a phone from 2006.
Right?
I guess we'll see.
The CNET review says that it's a "good starter phone for technophobes or teens." I thought that was funny, so I bought on on eBay for $20.97 (free shipping). It should arrive tomorrow. Oddly enough, I can't wait. I'm so excited to bring it into the AT&T store with my old SIM card and show it to those assholes in there, and I can't WAIT to tell them to knock that fucking data plan off my bill. I can maybe afford a $170-a-month cellphone bill for my wife and I, but I don't want to. There's more important things in the world. Like my children's faces. Like my wife's jokes. Like playing with the dog and reading and writing and pooping in the potty and seeing the firetrucks and seeing the stars and playing the banjo and it'll never be the same but it'll maybe even be better.
Or worse. I guess we'll see.
Either way, for now, I'm rebelling. Can you hear my rebel yell now?
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