As of today I have a cell phone and an iMac. It’s the Day of Things I Never Intended To Own.
The iMac is an ancient one, probably older than the PII I’m typing this on; it belonged to the former superintendent of Diocese of Lexington schools, and she donated it to St. Mark, where my mother works. As nobody there has any desire for it, she asked me if I wanted it, and the I Want More Computers instinct kicked in before I even realized what I was doing. I think I can make it acceptable, though, if I can gut and reformat it and make it a Red Hat box. I think I’ve heard about people doing that. Anyway, if I went to comp sci grad school without something that runs Linux, I bet they’d kick me out.
The cell phone is a little harder to explain. I’m going to have all my interweb through cable for the next couple years, and my future flatmates (DC and Maria) already have cell phones, and in theory I could save big bucks by just getting a cell myself and not even bothering with a land line.
This still took deliberation on my part. I loathe cell phones. I hate their omnipresence and their ugly faceplates. I hate the way people spend hours on end staring dully into the tiny screens and thumbing tiny buttons. I hate worrying about how many minutes someone has left when I call him or her. I HATE the ringtones, every single damn one of them. Given the choice between listening to a cell phone ring (especially in theaters, but really anywhere) and watching a baby get kicked to death, I would cheer for the steel-toed boots.
But we wound up doing it anyway, assisted by the most archetypical All-American Con Man I’ve ever met (Jaymes!) at Radio Shack. The idea was to get a calling plan for all four Adkinses, just adding three extra lines and getting phones for free. There was a lot more hassle and many hidden charges, predictably, but eventually we walked out with a big fat bill and four red Nokias.
I knew I shouldn’t have opened mine. I should have given it a cold and forbidding look and left it in the box, outside in the (metaphorical) snow. But I was weak. I turned it on.
I’m smitten. I love the way it lights up on the sides. I love the (surely soon-broken) pull-out antenna. I loved putting in all my contact numbers and email addresses and voice cues with the horrible keypad (I don’t think anyone’s ever designed a worse input device, including punch cards, but I loved doing it anyway). And I loved immediately setting the thing to Silent and Vibrate. May lightning strike me if I ever allow myself to produce any of those hideous sounds.
But as it turns out, we’ll probably have to return them all in the morning. Why? Because Sprint apparently doesn’t cover our house. We go on analog roam about half a mile before we get there, and it’s not like we live in the hinterlands–it’s in the suburbs, maybe five minutes from downtown Richmond. It doesn’t matter to me or Ian–we’ll be in Louisville for good pretty soon–but Mom still lives here, and Caitlan will at least be around this summer.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll have a Cingular phone instead, I don’t know. It’s my own fault for getting attached so quickly. I feel like I’m in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. I’m getting sentimental in my old age! I know better than to let myself get seduced by some two-bit piece of gadgetry I don’t need or want!
(I was going to name her Layla.)
