Sunday, January 2, 2011

numbers

I dropped my cell phone on New Years Eve.

It wasn't a big deal. I've done it many times before with no noticeable consequences. It just slipped out of my hand (which was, admittedly, less than steady after my third glass of champagne) and fell to the hardwood floor of the apartment where I was attending a house party. I was in the middle of an entertaining conversation with a very funny commercial airline pilot with a thick Boston accent at the time, so I bent down to pick up the fallen phone without breaking eye contact. He finished his joke and then I excused myself to survey the damage.

The phone had turned itself off. OK, no big deal. That happens sometimes. I restarted it.

Eventually, the screen lit up and I figured all was well...until I scrolled through my address book and found that all of my contacts had been deleted. Shit. How would I text "Happy New Year!" to my closest buddies at midnight? How would I know how to respond to text messages I would surely be receiving that night? How would I be able to effectively screen the calls I didn't want to take? There are maybe five phone numbers in the world that I know by heart. The rest had been, until a few minutes before, safely stored in my phone. And no, they weren't backed up.

At first, I let it bother me. I tried, in vain, to restart the phone, hoping my contacts would somehow reappear, but of course they didn't. I cursed BlackBerry and its faulty cellular devices. Eventually, I threw my hair back, returned my phone to my purse and joined my friends on the dance floor that had been forming in the living room.

The next morning, I thought little about my phone. I went to a New Years Day brunch and focused on having a good time (the mimosas and company made that part easy). I recovered a few phone numbers, thanks to some sweet Happy New Years texts, but that was it. Then this morning, I got a brand new phone. A fancy one, if you don't mind my saying so. A huge upgrade from my previous hand-me-down BlackBerry (which replaced my archaic Samsung flip phone). There are, it seems, no limits to what this phone can do--I would not be surprised to learn that it can toast bread and sing opera. Handy though it may be, it only contains the ten or so phone numbers I was able to recover yesterday.

Funnily enough, I am kind of liking the odd freshness of this predicament. It's annoying, sure, but in a way, it's like I get to start over. My old phone absolutely held numbers of many people I didn't actually talk to, but I just couldn't bring myself to hit delete because...I don't know...it just seemed so final. So, God/the universe/my hand on behalf of my unconscious/whatever other forces were operating that night, did it for me--and just before we entered 2011, no less, leaving me unencumbered for the new year.

So now, I have a fun new phone to play with and an address book to fill. I'm vowing to avoid dropping this phone (the rock-hard exterior case I got for it should help), and to mindfully rebuild my contact list. I'm completely unwilling to send out one of those ridiculous "I Lost My Phone Numbers" Facebook event invitations (I would never suggest that my losing my phone numbers qualifies as an event!), so it might be a slow process, but with any luck, a valuable one.

And yeah, if I didn't talk to you yesterday, that means I don't have your phone number. So if you're so inclined (and, I mean, you're reading my blog so I'm guessing that means you are) shoot it my way.

1 comment:

Gabe Russell said...

Blackberries don't back up your address book? That seems a little bit insane.