Prepoceros

This evening I had a 6:30 tutoring lesson in a part of town that’s a pain to get to during rush hour. I got out of class at 3:30, so I figured I’d drive out there early and spend that extra hour or two at a Barnes & Noble or someplace instead of in traffic.

As I left the apartment this morning I decided against taking my laptop. I got a little twitchy thinking about spending two hours in a place with wireless access that I couldn’t use, but my computer’s pretty heavy, and I was sure I could find something non-interwebby with which to occupy myself for a while—a book, say. I walked out the door with one last wistful backwards glance, hoping I wouldn’t regret leaving my baby behind.

Fast-forward to 4:00-ish in the afternoon. I’ve just gotten on the freeway heading out of town when my phone dies. Dies as in dead. Gone, broken, unresponsive. While I was talking on it, even. I stare at it for a second, mind reeling, and…OMGWTFBBQ. My phone. My phone is dead. I have no phone. No phone AND no internet. You mean…you mean I’ll have to survive out in this wilderness for the next five hours ON MY WITS ALONE?! What do I look like, a friggin’ Boy Scout?

What if my car breaks down? What if my tutoring student tries to call me? What if I get really really lost? Or kidnapped? What if I see a funny bumper sticker and I have to share it with someone RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND?

After I calmed down a bit, my first thought was, “Wow, this is hilarious. I ought to tell somebody.” But no! I couldn’t! Second thought: “Oh man, I gotta blog this.” But I couldn’t do that either*! For several miles I seriously considered going home (which would have added at least an extra hour to my commute) just so I could, I dunno, make sure the internet was holding itself together without me. (Turns out it was. Phew!)

The bright side of my involuntary disconnectedness is that I was freed from the obligation of finding a wifi-equipped establishment in which to kill time. Instead I ate at Fuddruckers for the first time in three years (and proved a couple theorems for tomorrow’s Analysis class while I ate), then hit up the Old Navy outlet next door. Not a bad afternoon, all in all.

The funny thing was that from time to time the sense of “loss” I felt from not having a working phone or an internet connection bled over to things I don’t normally miss. Why didn’t I bring any socks? Where’s my toothbrush? Why is there no chocolate in my car? How have I managed to get through this whole day without a blue pen? Strange.

After all that, I finally got to the student’s house, only to find that she wasn’t there and had forgotten to cancel the lesson. Oops!

So I went home. Three hours older, but with a full tummy and some new clothes. Pretty fair trade.

My phone, by the way, was only temporarily out of commission. I figured that what had killed it was my talking on it while walking through the rain to my car, so I took it apart (as far as I could) and left it in my car to dry while I shopped. As I pulled out of the student’s neighborhood on my way home I put the phone back together, and, after a few false starts, it worked again! Hallelujah! I even had two whole messages, which is about as many as I usually get in a week.

Are you as dependent on your cell phone as I am? Could you cope if it died unexpectedly? I, um, totally coped. See, coming home would’ve been not-coping. But I was tough. I stuck it out. I coped. Hoo-ah.

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* Instead I began composing this post in my head and continued as the evening progressed. I almost went to bed without typing it up (note the late hour), but I knew if I didn’t post this today I wouldn’t post it tomorrow, either. Or the next day. Or ever. Which is how most things in life go, you know?

Tags: miscellany

This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 1:05 am and is filed under miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.