Phonely

Since the dawn of the new electronics-as-umbilical age, I have only been SWAP (Stuck Without A Phone) once. I left my mobile phone in my car at the Catalina Express dock in Long Beach and had to spend a weekend in Avalon incommunicado.

Tried to use a pay phone lately? Good Luck finding a working example.

Today my daughter called to tell me she'd left her cell phone in our car when I dropped her off at the airport. She'll be spending the next two days SWAP, and Phonely.

For those of you out there old enough to remember living the 80's as grown-ups (or at least as fully-fledged teenagers), you can appreciate both the despair and the risibility of being Phonely. Our modern model of constant communication provides a reassuring sense of safety and connectedness, so when it fails we feel more acutely alone than we ever would have felt in the 80's pre-cellular World, where disconnection was the norm and as a result not scary.

Just like, as children, we once could spend an entire summer's day playing on our own, or with kids our age, without our parents getting alarmed (until you missed dinner), we once could spend hours a day without even thinking about phones; without feeling compelled to call, or be called.

Now, with mobile phones as the crutch without which we can barely function, the loss of connectivity is as keenly felt as being stranded on a desolate highway with a broken car. More so, since if our car broke we could always use the mobile to call for help.

In a very real sense, life here is emulating art: in our cellular mobile hyper-connected World, we are becoming hive mind Borg, requiring the constant contact of other minds; abhorring the independence of even transient solitude.

And Phoneliness is the result when connectivity fails ...

(So DON'T forget and leave your phone in the car!)