Smartphone Who?

It was a hot and sticky New Orleans night when the phone stopped working. I was on my hands and knees, in the middle of a dirty street, staring at the cracked glass screen, mostly black with those silver static lines that let you know something is not right.  

I had just left one of those storefront massage parlors. Never a good idea. Not even drunk, but loose now, I was walking back to the house we rented for the week. Getting the foot massage cost extra but feels good and left my feet relaxed and slippery. I blamed those stupid sandals “I had to wear”, for slip-sliding me right off their soles and into the street. I twisted my ankle and skinned my knee. I landed on my phone and smashed it into the ground. I jumped back up like I was being chased, took 5 more steps and fell again. This time I stayed down for a minute. Contemplating. Questioning my most recent life decisions. My phone was still dark. Why was I so adamant about holding it to walk? Why didn’t I give it to my husband when he offered to carry it for me, in a nice safe pocket?  How many more pictures did I think I was going to take that night, of places I’ve been to, plenty of times before?

Anyway, I only cried a little. I was bleeding too. Those stupid shoes. They were still strapped to my ankles. I took them off and threw them away. Then I did the most dangerous and reckless thing you can do in the city of New Orleans on any given night: I walked the rest of the way home bare foot! What a scandalous and dramatic way to end a vacation. Or so I thought.

I quickly learned that I hadn’t broken my phone after the fall at all! Everybody’s phone was broken! Or stopped. Not working. No service. Offline. Off grid. Whatever. We were out of our minds! And I felt lucky and sad at the same time. Not just me and not just me. But really, what a great story I would tell, in the future, in person, whenever anybody asked, where were you when the world reset?

After freaking out for a few hours, flailing, you have to stop and form a plan. All panic aside, first and foremost, how the hell are we going to get back to Chicago? Time became irrelevant, so to speak, those first few days. Everything slowed down. Grinded to a halt, if that’s a term, and crawled back to normal. Luckily the computers continued to work and still continue to work, allowing all of us our access to the mainframe, if we still wanted it. Tickets were printed, receipts were received, travel resumed. Life rolled on, moved forward, carried onward and upward, as the saying goes, blazing all the old trails. The difference was only in the carrier, because without the phone to map our path and guide us along, things just took longer.

I’m not even sure, to this day, if anyone knows why or how. Or who? Conspiracy theories ran rampant for a while. Government.  Big Business. Big Tech. Big Pharma. The Mafia. The Cartels. The Illuminati. Aliens! But, as with anything exciting and new, the newer and more exciting world kept spinning. All those cell towers are still standing where they’ve always been. Silent now. They used to hum with a power that you didn’t even notice until it was gone. Metal trees breaking up the landscapes that could not care less that they contribute nothing more to the world than a perch for birds. I hear the young kids play a kind of scavenger hunt, treasure seeking game on the anniversary of the great shut down. They run around, all over the world, all night long, laughing and pinging from tower to tower.

I’m of the age before a smart phone existed or even a computer, so I have a more nostalgic viewpoint and a vague sense that this has all happened before. I’m not upset about losing the phone. I didn’t even use it to call people. I miss my games, of all the dumb things to care about, but I never liked being tied to a giant glowing box or a slim hot laptop either. The young people fussed and kicked dust for a minute then adjusted to desktops, laptops, and land lines so quickly you would think they invented them.

Interestingly, and without a lot of reasons that make sense, life has altered itself in ways that science will have to sort out later. There’s less pollution. The air seems clearer. The climate has leveled somehow, creating a natural world with calmer storms. Brain cancer is uncommon. Books are popular. Stories are being told. Stories are being told and remembered so we don’t forget the before and after.

People smarter than me will eventually have to sit down and sum it up. Gather the facts, organize the data, and create the model for everything we have changed and learned. I try not to think too seriously ahead or behind. I’m looking forward to the party we’ll be having on a fresh spring day, in a warm green park, with clear blue skies for the formal meet and greet of the new world order. We’ll all be sipping smart sweet drinks chit chatting around and asking the same question. Smartphone who?