Cell Me Short

My cell phone is sleeping next to me. It's exhausted. It should be. We've had a long day. Pressed against my bed spread, the scuffed silver phone lies still. Florescent light from the ceiling festers in its wrinkled scratches. I slide my hand down its side. I know its contours well. Every day my fingers grind against its numerical chest. Every day I clutch the slim machine in my hand. All this attention is slowly destroying it. The numbers that were once elegantly precise have flaked off. Now I can see into its messy stomach with masses of wires and the dull plastic beneath the metallic skin.

The screen's blackness erupts into bright, sky blue. On the cell phone's newly alert face, a cartoon letter pops out of an animated envelope.

1 New Message from: Boyfriend.

Eagerly, I press the phone's round center button that watches me like an unblinking eye ball.

Love you babe goodnight.
10:58pm 3/25/09

Cradling the cell phone in my hand,Ｉimagine his eyes and voice.

Americans cell phone users between 13 and 29 send an average of 20 text messages per day.

I would like to know what I have missed because of my relationship with my phone. There must be so much. I imagine two lovers on the bus, holding hands for the first time. Hunched over my metal device, poking messages into they key pad, I do not see the their hands slink together. I will never perceive them, and to me they will never exist. How else have I condensed my existence? I think of all the trickles of sunlight, the shadows of knotted grass blades, the lacy silhouettes of trees that I never saw. All of them invisible to my eyes that stared at a square inch screen instead.

4.1 billion people own cell phones. That amounts to six of every ten people.

I would like to hear all of the things that people never told me because of my cell phone. If you can talk to someone anytime, why speak at all? My cell phone, a vein connecting me to my family, my boyfriend, my best friend. But what does this vein pump? Forgettable words and filtered feelings. When you're connected with everyone so intimately, able to interrupt them at any moment, it's so easy to take them for granted. Perhaps cell phones weaken that yearning that unites people in the first place

In a recent survey, 51% of those polled said they could not imagine giving up their cell phone.

Yes, I do love that blue illumination that announces a text or call. My cell phone whispers in my ear that people want me, people need me. That excitement is addicting. So addicting, sometimes I purposely forget my cell phone when I go to Portland. What liberation! Sprinting around a city with only my own thoughts. I feel connections with the grumbling max train, with the witch-like woman perched across from me on the bus, and the low growl of the crowded streets. No machine is needed for these bonds. It's satisfying. Yet, I always feel a slow pull of anxiety in my chest. Whose call am I missing? Whose texts have I not responded to? Who thinks I'm ignoring them? Times like those, I wonder if people can really be alone anymore.

I scoop my petite phone into my palm and tell it to wake me up at 8:15 in the morning. Tomorrow, my phone's voice will be the first noise to penetrate my ears. I place the weary machine on my nightstand, and switch of the light. I better go to sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow.