Otherwise engaged
I am an i-Phone widow. Meeester took delivery of his i-Phone yesterday and I think that’s it for me. He said less than three words to me last night as he footered with it and didn’t even say goodbye to me this morning before leaving for work. Maybe because he’s got an app for that and just forgot to activate it, assuming that it had already whispered a computer generated “Cheerio. Do you need me to get anything on my way home?” to me as he walked past me as I pretended to be just about to get up. “Need to remember to pay attention to your wife? We’ve got an app for that!”
Of course I could always try and salvage our relationship and join his club by getting one of my own like one of those wives who take up golf because they realise if they don’t they’ll only ever see their husband when he’s asleep beside them or at family weddings and funerals. But I can’t think of anything else that would be more of a waste of money (apart from buying a set of golf clubs). Not because the i-Phone isn’t amazing- adverts every four minutes tell me that this isn’t the case. No it would be a waste of money because I don’t even like having a mobile phone. I barely like having a home telephone.
I am what they call a late adopter. I am the person who people get stuff for because I need to be forced into updating my life. I am convinced I wouldn’t even have a mobile phone at all if it weren’t for the fact that ten years ago I got given a Nokia as a leaving present from the work that I refused to take a company mobile phone from in the first place because “it means you’ll call me when I’m not at work and make me do work things”. I can’t think why I never moved up in that company, for the life of me.
I don’t think I’ve ever got over that contempt for people in the late eighties who carried mobile phones the size of a large doner kebab about and shouted into them, like they were yoghurt cartons attached to their mates distant yoghurt carton with a piece of string. A part of me still feels like a right dick if I answer my mobile phone in a public place. I cringe as I hear myself say “I’m on a bus!” People stopped declaring where they were a good decade ago, for goodness sakes.
I forget to take my phone with me, I forget to charge it, I forget to switch it back off silent mode for a good week after I’ve been to the cinema with it, I have lost it more times that I’ve probably ever used it to make an actual call. I am not alone in this. Phone my mother on hers and she will answer startled like the ringing has slapped across the face, shrieking “Hello????” at a pitch only spaniels can hear. I don’t think I’ve ever called my dad on his and he’s actually ever answered. Pretty much everyone I am in contact with has said this phrase to me “Didn’t you get the message I left for you on your phone?” To which the universal answer is a sheepish “No….” and a silent thought to myself of “My phone has an answering service, who knew?”
No I will just have to watch my husband silently from the sidelines and occasionally show interest as he shows me a new app for an action he never needed to perform in real life before the machine arrived. Yes, you heard right I just called it a machine.
I will try to link it to my own life to show I’m not completely out of touch, “Can you blog from that?” I’ll say, to which the universal answer will be “Blogging is so 2007. We’re all tweeting now.”
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