Friday, October 17, 2008

Phantom Menace

My cell phone is definitely my adult Linus' blanket. Aside from being, you know, a necessary and quite useful tool, my scraped lil' Chocolate is like a companion. It charges under my pillow (fueling my future brain tumor), rests on my lap at work and during car rides and is always, at most, a few feet away. When I first got my cell phone (I was 16 and dating someone the parents did not like), I instantly bemoaned the technology. I thought it was just a tether. Now I can't leave home without it, have left work to retrieve it. No lie.

The concept of "phantom vibration syndrome" isn't new nor terribly scientific. I had a crazy case of it yesterday while riding to a crime scene.

I was in the passenger seat of a photographers car, feverishly mapping the location in his GPS. As I cursed the touch screen, I felt the purse at my feet vibrate. Panic began to brew and frustration festered as reached into my purse and found I was wrong. I dropped my phone back into my purse and not even 10 seconds later, I heard the chirp of a new text. Reach in, dooped again. It wasn't the photog's phone, I knew that for sure. This was my mind playing tricks on me.

On the return trip, I thought I felt my phone vibrating on my thigh. I did a little silent scream to myself and reached into my phone. No effing activity.

I think I need to take a phone hiatus. A whole day away from my little buddy that has so much influence on my life, it is messing with my head. How liberating this will be! Sweet freedom. A brief respite for me to live life again.

Yeah, it won't happen.

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