My phone, My life
For someone who has a rather large aversion to talking on the phone, my life truly does revolve around my cell phone.

I'm not a fan of phone conversations because I just don't do them well. I don't call people very often because I fear the voicemail almost as much as I fear actually getting the person I'm trying to call. I prefer email. Being a hermit, conversation in general is hard. But I am better at carrying on a conversation in person when I can see eyes and lips of the person on the other side of my conversation.

Now, that doesn't mean stop calling me because I don't like to talk to you. I do like to talk to you. I'm just saying Phone Conversation is not my best sport.

So, knowing that most, if not all of my phone conversations are awkward, drawn out moments of jumbled nonsense, you'd think I could do without my cell phone as a major key to keeping in touch with people. But, the contrary is actually true.

If I ever lost or broke my cell phone, I would likely never be heard from again. Why? Because every phone number I use is saved in my phone, and conveniently not written down anywhere else. Everytime I get a phone number, it goes in the phone. Friends, family, doctors, haircut person, everyone. In the phone.

Come to think of it, I have no idea what my parents' phone number is. I'd have to look it up in my phone. There's a niner in there somewhere, I think.

Every once in awhile I remind myself that I should make a list of all my phone numbers in case something ever happens to my phone. But I usually forget soon after I remember, and I have consequently never gotten around to it.

The other night I dropped my phone on the hard kitchen floor. This is not an out-of-the-ordinary occurance. I drop the phone all the time, and it's always fine. It's a very resilient phone. However, this time I picked it up and noticed the screen was blank. That was new.

Oops.

I pressed the 'on' button. It flickered for a few seconds, then went blank again. Crap. This was bad.

I took it to my bedroom and plugged it into the charger. For some reason I thought this would magically bring it back to life. It didn't.

I started freaking out. What's wrong with my phone? Who do I call? Phone Fixer People? AT&T? Um, no. See, the phone number for AT&T would be in the phone. The dead phone.

It dawned on me that I couldn't call anyone. Except 911, but I didn't figure this was that kind of emergency. Plus, many people couldn't call me, since they never seemed to embrace the fact that I actually have a home phone with a home phone number. Most people just use my cell phone to get ahold of me, which is fine. But at that moment I cursed them for not ever making use of my home phone.

I felt cut off from the world. Alone. Frightened. Suffocated . . .

I looked at the phone and begged it to work. I can't afford a new phone, and even a new phone would not get back all the phone numbers lost inside the dead phone. I pleaded with it. I picked it up and banged it several times in the palm of my hand, in a classic ER-type moment of resuscitation. STAY WITH ME!! I NEED YOU!!! WORK!!

It did. It suddenly came back to life. I was relieved.

Apparently beating on things really does fix them. Thank you, ER.

But I should make a list of my phone numbers, just in case.

C.T.