Goodbye, old friend

Today at around 1:30, my mom called to tell me I should watch a TV show on a channel I do not receive.

It was to be the last time I would ever hear my beloved Cicada ringtone.



At the time, it was a normal call. My phone worked as it had for these past 7+ years -- that is to say, perfectly. With my mother's voice echoing through the hollow gray case, I could hear ever detail with perfect volume and clarity.

Later that afternoon, I decided to step out for a walk and picked up the ol' phone. The top panel had popped off years ago (I'm pretty sure it was in a GSU conference room during a BU Tonight writers' meeting), so I could only turn the phone on and off and change its "mode" (normal, silent, pager, etc.) by poking around with a key or pen cap. I went to turn it to Pager Mode when I noticed the little tab I'd always pressed with my pen wasn't there. I frantically pressed down where the tab had been, but the phone wouldn't respond. In the struggle, it turned itself off (this is the one thing about it that is maybe just short of perfect -- it sometimes turns itself off automatically). It was dead. My phone -- the only phone I'd ever owned, the phone I'd gotten just days before I left to college -- was dead.

How do I feel about all this? Well, I guess I feel about my seven-year-old phone the way I'd feel about a thirty-year-old cat dying. Sad, sure, but no one could say I hadn't gotten my money's worth. The only difference is I would be able to get by for a while without immediately buying a new cat -- in this case, I had to rush out (ON MY SUNDAY) to buy an utterly charmless slab of Apple-made glass with some of the worst ringtones I've ever heard. A dog barking? Church bells? A nuclear meltdown warning alarm? Ugh. Perhaps cruelest of all, a ringtone called "Crickets" -- but rather than the artful, peaceful electronic chirping of my erstwhile Cicada, Crickets is literally the sound of actual crickets. So at least for now this thing is staying indefinitely on Pager Mode (they still call it that, right?).

But all that is for tomorrow. Today is for remembering my old phone. I still have it, thankfully, so I still have time with it. Lessons learned? That a phone can be more than a phone. It can be a friend.

(Lesson two: apparently your contacts, at least in the old 2003-model phones, are saved right to the phone and don't automatically go onto your SIM card! Who knew?!)