No Cell-Phone-Free-Zone

It’s no news that cell phones are both heaven’s gift and the Devil’s instrument. The wholesale invasion of human attention and interaction, reducing it all to heads-down on tiny, private, self-enclosed screens, is now simply the new norm. I’ve done my best—and perhaps better than most— to not walk and talk through the streets, not check it in public every chance I get, to still bring books on buses and such and even occasionally, just sit and notice and observe and sometimes (gasp!) talk to strangers! 

But last night, the phone appeared in a here-to-fore sacred spot—my dreams. Still struggling with jet lag— slept 11pm to 5am the first night, 11 pm to 10 am (!) the second and last night, 11 pm to 3:30 am, up for 90 minutes, back to sleep at 5:00 am and that’s when I left to go to school by bus (in my dreams)  and then realized it was 9:15am and my first class started at 9. So opted for the car and on the way to school, tried to call while stuck in weird traffic on a new unfamiliar route and couldn’t get to my normal screen on my phone. Found a way to put in the number (which miraculously, I got right digit-wise) but no way to send the call and kept fumbling with buttons to try to get the screen back to the way I know it. Luckily, I woke up (8:15 am) so the 8^thgrade didn’t miss their music class after all and my phone still worked as I’m used to it working.

So there you have it. Jet-lag sucks and phones are now officially everywhere. That’s my message to start the day.