Reasons why losing your iPhone [or any other smartphone for that matter] should be classified as its own state of emotional distress.

I’m sure you just read that title and thought “Silly Brianne, you are greatly over exaggerating.  One’s phone is not that essential to one’s emotional and physical well-being.”

If you thought that, you clearly do not own an iPhone….or a Blackberry….or a Droid.  Or you’re 65 years old and you think that when kids talk about their iPhones they are just using improper possessive pronouns. Because if you did own a smartphone you would be currently nodding your head in agreement as opposed to slowly shaking it in silent disapproval of my dependence on my phone.

So one fateful Sunday night is what inspired this post. Let me set the scene for you.  A young, bright-eyed Bri is sitting at the desk, surfing the web and jamming to her iTunes [ as is her custom]. The good madam even had a book or two out in order to complete some work that would be due soon. iPhone lays idle on desk next to computer so Bri decides to plug it up to iTunes in order to add pictures of her incredibly adorable godchild to it. As soon as iTunes recognizes the phone, it asks if she would like to update it to the latest version of  the iPhone software. Bri notices this and contemplates the update and says to herself, “Why of course, I’d enjoy an update. Bettering my phone could never go horribly wrong and leave me  phoneless and therefore dang near purposeless in life as a whole.” SO unknowing Bri, clicks update and from there things go horribly, disastrously and unprecedentedly wrong!!! iPhone restarts and decides to kill itself and not work ever again. This prompts the now distraught Bri to frantically call Apple and plead with them to save my phone, as if they were doctors doing life-saving surgery on my sister. After all attempts at iPhone saving failed, the resolve was to ship now assassinated phone to Apple headquarters in California so that they can fix it or ship me a new one free of charge…which is nice. Except that it left me without an iPhone for four whole days. I’m pretty sure I dang near assumed the fetal position  about 30 times.

And i will be the FIRST to admit that entirely TOO much of my life is held together by my phone. I have a problem, I’m yelling it from the mountain tops, i have a huge problem. So much of a problem that I should be in AA for iPhone addicts[guess it would be called iA, i suppose]. It would go something like this actually:

Me: *stands up* Hi my name is Brianne and I’m an iPhone addict.

Group of fellow iPhone-heads: Hi Brianne.

Group leader: Welcome Brianne, now the first step is to let go of the iPhone. Now hand me your iPhone. *holds out hand to receive my phone*

Me: *clutches phone as if i’ts the last bottle of water after the apocalypse* absolutely not.

Group leader: *in a calm voice with a hint of panic because of the denial to her request* Now Brianne, don’t be silly. Just hand me the phone you can do it. Come on, everyone does this at their first meeting.

Me: *stares* umm, no.

Group leader: *proceeds to forcibly remove phone from my hands* while yelling  IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO BREAK YOUR DEPENDENCE. YOU HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO LIVE FOR!!

Me: * tussling to hold onto phone* YOU’LL HAFTA PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!! YOU’LL NEVER TAKE IT FROM ME ALIVE!

*rest of group stares in awe and disbelief as crazed Bri runs around the room trying to avoid evil group leader trying to separate me from phone*

*meeting ends horribly wrong*

*Bri’s family winds up having to do an intervention on her in the end*

See, that’s how big of a problem I have. So before you go calling me an addict, don’t worry I already have. But still, I need to share with you all the mental and emotional duress I had to endure these past few days.

Without my iPhone I had to resort to a go phone that is nothing comparable to my phone.  I was without my weather app so i had to go outside in order to figure out what it felt like outside. Also, I pretty much went M.I.A. on twitter. Do you know how many random occurrences I wanted to share with my followers that I could not because I was remiss of my technologically superior phone.  Also, I pretty much started going through Ranch Sunflower seeds as if they were oxygen. [Okay, I used to do this before i lost my phone but I had actually gone two weeks without putting a seed to my lips. Too bad losing my phone left me idle and pretty much catapulted me back into my Sunflower seed obsession.] Another downfall, my texting game pretty much was null in void. I don’t know who made the dictionary for that go phone but whoever it was must have only knew 20 words. I could not double space to get a period or anything of the sort because go phones don’t come with this nifty little feature.

PLUS i had no contacts at all except my mama and one of my besties because FUN FACT iPhone contacts are stored only on the phone and the computer….NOT on the SIM card so I was pretty much just tweeting ppl from my computer and hoping they would see it quickly enough for me to get an answer. Wanna know what I did when a song came on the radio that I liked but didn’t know who sang it? Absolutely Nothing! Because I couldn’t, for i could not Shazam it. Let’s not even talk about the wack ringtones I had to endure. I had no idea who was calling me until I looked at the phone itself because everybody’s ringtone was the stupid Haramba Dance song, or the mexican hat dance or some crap. It was a rough four days but I made it. I now have my new iPhone with me and all is mostly back to the way it was before [shoutout to Apple and their protection plan on that one].

I must say though, me losing my phone wasn’t all bad. I got a lot more work done. I even did a few assignments a week before they were due. I spent some time in the library, even talked to a few more people (even if it was just to whine about not having my phone). Most people sent their condolences for my fallen phone via Facebook or a consoling pat on the back. With that being said, I would prefer not to ever go more than 24 hours without my phone for it is a sad, lonely  road for a smartphone user to travel. Going from iPhone to go phone is a HARSH transition.

For now, all is right with the world.

So y’all, do my fellow smartphone users think they could last at least a whole day without their beloved cellular device. And for my non-smartphone users, i’d like to hear what y’all think too even if you think I’m an iPhone-dependent lunatic who should actually spend some time outside doing stuff as opposed to tweeting every song lyric she ever hears.

Peace and love and God for us all,

-Briizy