Eurgh, cotillion flashbacks. Not really. However, I am now a BlackBerry debutante and therefore have been presented to BlackBerry society, with my very own escort and black ruffle dress.
When I enlisted the help of Hutchy to scout out a possible new phone, I did not have any intention of actually getting one there and then. This was supposed to be more of a research trip—like an archaeological dig yields results like Oh, and this bone goes here and this one right there, but does not actually bring the dinosaur to life. It's a kind of maternally-instilled principle that you should not rush into things, especially potentially expensive and twenty-four-month contract things. But as my capacity for knowledge in the field of technology is absolutely nill, I inevitably had to delegate all my decision-making. This meant that in less than ten minutes a model, a tariff and an operator had been selected, and all that was left for me to do, in the words of the Dolly Parton-esque sales assistant, was Sign my life away—which I did.
And because I lacked the energy/enthusiasm to set the thing up on the train in the presence of HELP, I was left to my own devices. Just me and the new phone (can I even call a BlackBerry a phone? Isn't it like a hybrid species all on its own?). I will spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say I eventually prevailed in operating the little gadget, successfully locating my PIN number (fanks James), sending/receiving several texts, linking it up with my email (and inadvertantly deleting 90% of my contacts along the way...ahem), and accepting a call (which I afterwards completely forgot how to do and ended up muting it several billion times). I even made it a little more homely by personalising it with a wallpaper of a Wisconsin field which is oddly significant to me and serves as a constant reminder of my ultimate goal, and making my ringtone this. It's my thing, let it go. Now, duh, my old phone was not so neolithic it could not be personalised—to some extent—but having things that make me manically happy always with me in some form filled me with such a mix of ebullience and trepidation I cannot tell you. Things like that ease the otherwise traumatic transition from one era to another—with the concomitant counter that I begin to panic that a device so socially open will pollute my private private private stuff that I have never shared with anybody. I worry that the magic will fade out.
Anyway.
So after all this excitement, I was left with the cold corpse of my old phone, which is now stuffed in an Ikea compartment of my top drawer. It was a twelfth birthday present from my mum in 2004, and the sole reason I wanted it was because it had a pattern of a rose on it, and I was in the rather obnoxious belief, or holding up the pretense that, anything with a rose on it I must have, or must be meant for me, or we shared some kind of link, etc. It was only after I got the phone and inspected it a little closer through the inevitable anticlimactic realism that comes with expectations being met, that I realised the roses were in fact tulips. Doh. But, it was all good, I realised after the chagrin wore off, because actually I preferred tulips at this point to most any other flower, as roses tended to be a little too cliche for me to bear. (If anyone is keeping track, my irrevocably favourite flower—for the foreseeable future—is a daisy. And not the big flouncy African kind, although they are gorgeous. I mean the ones you get out in your back yard and make pretty crowns out of and have petals that turn flamingo pink in the sunset etc.)
I guess after I realised it was dead and never to be used again, I started racking my brain for all the times I'd had with it. Most of my teenage life has been accompanied by that phone. I have pictures on it some people would demand ransoms for. I have texts on it that will never cease to make me smile or laugh or cry or feel all warm and fuzzy inside! I have numbers on it of people I no longer know and people I will never forget. I have never been one of those people who is surgically attached to their phone, but it has been right there with me through some of my worst and best moments. Sometimes it has even been the instrument of them. It has alternately tempted me and saved me. It has seen me up and down, and everywhere in between. It may even have been thrown at a wall or two in its time.
I don't know about anybody else, but I seem to form emotional attachments to inanimate objects, whether intentional or not, and only come to realise the full extent of my affection when the time comes to part ways. When my television went on the blink and began performing rainbow dances during the pivotal moments of Jonathan Creek and I was forced to recognise I needed a replacement, I was distraught. No matter the vitriol I'd spewed at the thing, no matter how violently I'd hammered my fist against it and shook it from side to side, no matter how many points on the Richter scale my blood pressure had ricocheted through—when faced with this dilemma I was absolutely adamant that I would do anything to save my television. I mean, it was big and beautiful and silver and had an in-built VHS system. And all the new ones were black and sleek and like something straight out of Nineteen Eighty Four the way they just stared blankly at you from the opposite wall with their out-of-sight DVD slot and microscopic remote control with buttons like RADIO on them. But eventually, after an arduous battle of resistance, I was forced to admit defeat, and within a week one of those imposters was carted into my room and placed on the hallowed spot above my underwear drawer—while the poor silver beast was chucked unceremoniously out the back, not even the right way up! I was deeply upset.
There are countless episodes such as this breadcrumbed throughout my life, starring anything from books to shoes to pens to cameras to straws. And the result is invariably the same; after a week or so of passive-aggressive mourning and absolute defiance, the resentment seamlessly melts and before I know it it's next year and I'm laughing to myself thinking, Hey, remember when I used to hate this? What an ass was I! And as much as I strive to be faithful and hold onto that love of the deceased even after it is gone, eventually it fades and is transported to the new.
So when I acquired this BlackBerry, it got me to thinking about all of this. And aside from this week acknowledging that I am of an inherently manic disposition, something I knew only subconsciously, I also came to the conclusion that part of the affection projected onto these inanimate objects is purely the virtue of the people, the actual human relationships imprinted upon it. That's why it's so hard to leave behind at first, because I panic that I am leaving all of those indelible and yet oh-so-fragile memories behind to disintegrate, that my abandonment is their nullification, their nihilation. And that's also why it is eventually so easy to readjust, despite my initial misgivings. Because those memories and whatever else are part of ME, not the phone or the camera or the television or the whatever else. (Clothes and books and fings like that, I grant you, are extremely different.) But that realisation was quite a revelation to me. And while I know in some cases those personal associations are not all that goes into the DNA of the affinity, because for me there is something else a tad more stubborn/self-sufficient/holistic about it—that revelation was nonetheless quite an uplifting one!
Of course, while all this rumination was working the cogs of my subconscious, I was going into a total tiz about becoming surgically attached to not only a phone, but a BlackBerry, which is, as wisdomous Meejin agrees, a whole nother kettle of fish. Like Buns. They have things like PR status and BBM and having one makes me feel a little like Hugo Horton doing his rap. But I got it out of my system. We bonded. We survived the teething. And it helped infinitely that Meejin understood and dubbed it The RoseBerry.
I also do this thing when anything with an attached time-frame falls into my lap, like a bus pass or a voucher or something—I wonder where I will be then. I wonder what will have happened. I fantasize about all the amazing possibilities, good and bad, that could take place.
So now, with a twenty-four-month contract ahead of me, I'm wondering again.
Stay tuned.
I also do this thing when anything with an attached time-frame falls into my lap, like a bus pass or a voucher or something—I wonder where I will be then. I wonder what will have happened. I fantasize about all the amazing possibilities, good and bad, that could take place.
So now, with a twenty-four-month contract ahead of me, I'm wondering again.
Stay tuned.
