ode to this old chunk of plastic and aluminum that some people (though not young people) might call a 'phone'.

I know you guys think of me as a hip, young tech hound, with all the latest gadgets and insider .html skills.  I know I radiate the aura of someone who just stepped out of the Matrix and knows complicated internet things like how to play Minecraft.  So if you can't bear to see me in any other light, I urge you to stop reading now.  Just look away.

Here's the truth: Just because I'm a millennial doesn't mean I know how to email photos to myself from a smartphone.  Just because I know how to type a blog post on a free hosting site doesn't mean I don't still print off (black and white) MapQuest directions before getting in the car because I don't have GPS on my phone or color cartridges in my printer.  The fact that I can update my Facebook status like a sick-@$$ boss can never make up for the fact that THIS is my phone:

Yes.  This is my actual phone that I use to call people and from which I'll occasionally send a 160-character-or-less text.  Or, I should say, this is my actual phone that I used to use to call people and send texts.  Because it's starting to show its age and it no longer adequately functions to call or text.

First of all, the speaker is dying.  Or so I presume.  Maybe it's working just fine according to the speaker standards of the days of yore, and no one was ever actually able to hear anyone else all along, and those Verizon commercials were just tricking you into thinking it was your network that was the problem.  Whatever the case, I cannot hear a blessed thing through this phone.  A while back, I was on the phone with my sister, who sounded like she was asking me a favor, so I said 'yes', not knowing exactly what I was saying yes to.  After later calling back and apologizing for literally having no idea what I'd agreed to, I convinced her to scream her request at me this time - at which point I could enthusiastically yell back that I would indeed be honored to attend her birth if I was able to.  It turns out I was agreeing to something pretty important all along.  Good thing I made that follow-up call.

Second of all, the typing keys don't all work.  If you ever receive a text from me (fat chance, I hate texting) that includes the letter "P", you can know how deeply loved you are because I must've sat at my dining room table jamming a pen into the button for at least three full minutes in order to present you with such a gift.  Kiiiiiind of sucks that it's the P button, as that letter is integral to spelling my own freaking name, so I constantly look like a moron.

Third of all, all photos and screenshots I receive are the approximate size and color quality of a nickel.  If you've ever sent me a screenshot of anything, you can be confident that I was not only completely unable to see it, but also highly unlikely to tell you at the time because that would require a response text.  So I just pretended I saw it.

Fourth of all, incoming texts from smartphones (so, like, all incoming texts) get broken up into individual five-word messages, which means for every one text you send me, I receive about twelve individual text notifications, and of course they don't arrive in order.  I get to sit there for the next twenty minutes trying to decipher what's being communicated like I'm intercepting stuff from the Enigma.


I think you can see that I need a new phone, though that presents its own conundrums.  First of all, I don't want a smartphone.  I don't want to be attached to the internet all day.  I don't like feeling like I'm wiretapped.  I don't want the ability to Google stuff at the drop of a hat - I like living life slow and simple and relatively uninformed.  Second of all, my current non-data phone plan costs $17 a month, which I am loath to give up.  Third of all, I feel like I'm doing the hard work of maintaining our folk memory.  If no one's willing to be the guy carrying around a phone like this, pretty soon we will lose all touch with our pioneer roots, and will one day forget altogether what cell service must've been like in Laura Ingalls' day.  I'm just not sure I'm willing to pay that cost in the name of convenience.  Technology is such a slippery slope.

So I've been racking my brain for an acceptable compromise, and I think I've got it: I need a Jitterbug.  It has a loud speaker, arthritis-friendly buttons, and a classic design that has resisted our culture's obsession with the young, flashy and trendy.  It's functional and classic and tailor-made for old people, just like I like things.  Yes, the Jitterbug is definitely the way I should go.

Sure, I'll be sore tempted to B'Dazzle it, but that's true of any phone, really.