brooklynguist

My cell phone keeps shutting off at random, without any kind of warning or provocation. Also, I haven’t been able to use the 9 key in like three months. Which is convenient.

I’m hesitant to get a new one, since this is the only phone I’ve managed to hold on to for more than six consecutive months since high school. My history of freakish and sloppy cell phone mishaps is primarily a testament to my own drunken idiocy. But, if it is the Fates who define my cell phone destiny, I don’t want to tempt them into retribution by taking matters into my own hands.

I mean, they’re probably already out to get me. Observe:

- There was the mysterious disappearance of my vodafone one boozy Dublin night during study abroad. One theory is that I left it in a cab outside the dorm. The other explanation involves a spurned Irish cop, a hat shaped like a penguin, and a fervent affection for grilled cheese sandwiches. I’d prefer to leave it at that.

- There was the theft of my purse in the hotel lobby of a Miami hotel during spring break senior year of college. Possessions lost included my wallet, cash, credit cards, cell phone, and boarding pass for the return trip to Boston. The loss happened to coincide with the disappearance of a fellow spring breaker’s boxers after a midnight swim. For the rest of the trip, my friends wondered aloud about where Phil’s boxers could possibly have gone. I spent my last day of vacation alone in a Miami police station alternately filling out reports and weeping.

- There was the night I dropped my Samsung into a toilet in Fenway Park after a Sox game. Like a mother after a drowning child, I dove in with out any thought of self-preservation. My hand. In a toilet. After a major league baseball game. In a moment of dawning horror and disgust, I then threw the phone at a wall and split it in half. RIP Samsung.

- I next ordered something called a Pantech 81000 online because it was the cheapest cell phone available. When it arrived I discovered it was roughly the size of a box of tic tacs. My roommates began taking bets on how long it would take me to lose it. Whoever had four months in the pool cleaned up. Driving home from work during an epic Boston blizzard, I got stuck in a snowdrift on Route 2 and was forced to get out of my car and start shovelling snow with my bare hands. Four times. During the course of one of these trips my cell phone and I somehow parted ways. I then spent the next six hours sitting in standstill traffic without any cell phone and my gas reader sliding slowly towards E.

- Which brings me to my current phone, a black Motorola Razr. Razr and I seemed destined for a longterm relationship until the night I, struggling with bags of Christmas presents, dropped it on an outdoor F train platform in Brooklyn. The battery cover broke off, and in a move that defied physics, slid roughly 20 feet forward over the platform edge and onto the track. As I peered wistfully over the edge I was approached by a kindly if somewhat toothless middle-aged couple. The man, after asking me if I was ok, offered to jump onto the platform and rescue the back of my phone. ”I do this kind of thing all the time,” he assured me. “I’ve rescused phones, engagement rings, toilet paper…” I really wanted to ask about the toilet paper thing, but there wasn’t any time, as the man was now taking off his coat and preparing to dive onto the snowy track, only a few feet from the tunnel. “Please,” I begged him. “It’s only the battery cover. I don’t even need it for the phone to function.”

Famous last words, I guess, because it stopped functioning normally the next day. But I think I’m going to wait it out rather than get a new one. It’s only a matter of time before it gets run over by a bus or I drop it in a glass of whiskey or something, and it’s better to let the Fates do their work.