On an ill-fated Saturday night a few weeks ago I lost my iPhone. (Have you seen it?) I might have left it on Bart, (I was a bit preoccupied) it may have fallen out of my leather jacket pocket while I was waiting for the bus. But where I left it isn’t important. I mean, searching for it, retracing my steps, that’s when where I left it is the key. But now that it’s gone, it doesn’t matter where it is. I’m starting fresh.
One Christmas in the late 90’s I got a Sailor Moon address book. It easily became my most prized possesion. With smartphones we may have Emojis and Instagram but what I find the most genius is the contact list in all of our phones and the luxury to never having to memorize a phone number again. Well, I wish I still used my Sailor Moon book because upon losing my phone I only have two phone numbers currently memorized, because numbers are terrible.
And then, of course, the obivious cursed thing to losing your iPhone is calling Apple. I felt like Carrie Bradshaw the time she carried her broken ’98 Macbook in a scarf to the Apple store, the same sad smile from the Apple employees after they asked Carrie “You don’t back up?”
Later that Saturday night I announced with a giggle that I could “go totally 90’s!” You know, an authentic CD player/flip phone combination. I would just use an actual camera for actual pictures and abandon Instagram for a while. Disappear and just be me. But that Sunday I wasn’t as optomistic.
I ate my words. I wasn’t 90’s at all. I was in middle school all over again. My mom lent me her pink iPod nano and I got a pink burner phone to match (edgy back when Bush was in office, not so much now.) I acutally felt this tinge of depression. I experienced my first case of first world problems. I felt that I was more connected to the world, but also wasn’t a part of my world. A piece of me was gone. On a sidewalk somewhere or or a cold bus. I’ve missed people before but never something made out of metal and broken glass.
I work from a 2004 laptop that sounds like it’s a plane about to take off. Most of the time I wear vintage men’s jeans from the 2nd hand store. (Tight jeans on them, nearly high waisted on me.) But as a writer, on the go, always thinking of something to write, as a person that doesn’t own a watch, as a human being that could never remember anyone’s phone number, fuck it, I love my iPhone.
Angel Sunlight is a Tower staff writer. Email her at [email protected]