Dual phonership

Yes. I have a blog.

That doesn’t mean I’m technologically advanced. At all. Case in point: Kerrie and I now have our own cell phone. Yeah, that’s right. We shared a cell phone. We had one phone between the two of us.

I know we weren’t alone – there are plenty of people who don’t have a cell phone at all, and numerous who have just one per couple. But I feel like we’ve broken through some sort of time warp, like we’ve been admitted into the 21st century, equipped with a modern mobile device and strong enough to handle it on my own.

We’ve decided to take the steps towards dual-cell-phone ownership because, well, we’ve got a baby on the way and we figure we should probably both be able to get a hold of the other at a moment’s notice.

Also, I wanted text messaging.

I have friends that only communicate through text messaging, and I’ve always been a big fan of the instant message culture – a quick, slam it through method of communicating without actually having to tolerate the other person’s voice. You can go away and come back minutes – hours! – later and keep the conversation going. It’s talking while doing, it’s connecting via time-lapse.

The thing I find so funny about cell phone culture is the need to equip a phone with everything deemed necessary. The first thing I did with my phone is make it an extension of myself. I painstakingly sought out the perfect ring tones, matching my personality with a mix of ironic and funny. I subscribed to all of my favorite sports team alerts, so now I’m instantly connected with the Twins or Pacers score as soon as the game is over. I took pictures. I assigned specific rings to specific people. I let the world know I was on the text message bandwagon.

I was a total dork, in other words.

It’s fascinating how much we try to tell the world about ourselves through a small piece of machinery. We really think that these phones – from ring to wallpaper to text message signature – is able to accurately depict our real life, as if someone could piece together our true worth by scrolling through a list of pictures and ring tones. And nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the exact opposite happens – we’re able to create a personality that’s exactly like the one we WANT to have, that we WISH we had, the perfections we otherwise lack, the taste we otherwise don’t have.

So with that, I took caution. I didn’t add rhinestones. I refused to purchase wallpaper with the Pacers logo on it. I even stopped short of running around, taking everyone’s picture and assigning it to a number.

But that “Drop It like It’s Hot” ring tone? Yeah. It’s on there.