Sleepwalk With Me_ And Other Painfully True Stories - Mike Birbiglia [51]
Whatever the case, I’m completely addicted to my phone. And I’m not the only one. I was at a movie recently and the guy next to me answered his phone in the middle of the movie and he answered it by saying, and I quote, he said, “Who dis?” Which means not only was he willing to talk to someone during the movie, he was willing to talk to anyone during the movie. I’m not sure what the past tense of dis is, but he did not care who it dus.
I actually bought a new phone recently. And my brother Joe wanted me to upgrade to the iPhone.
He was like, “You gotta get the iPhone.”
“Why?”
“It’s, you know, it’s the fourth generation. It’s got two cameras. You gotta get it.”
“I still don’t understand the reason.”
“Don’t you take pictures?”
“I thought you were talking about a phone.”
(Pause) “It’s both. You gotta get it.”
I didn’t get it. And don’t get me wrong: I love cameras and I love phones, but I also love pizza and ice cream and I’ve never seen them smashed together into one superfood.
When you go to buy anything these days, the guy’s always like, “You know, it’s also a camera.” And it’s a slippery slope. Like one day I’ll go to the store to buy something and they’ll be like, “It’s also a camera.”
“I just wanted a grapefruit.”
“It’s a camera-grapefruit. You take pictures of yourself eating the grapefruit, then you poop the pictures.”
“That is the opposite of what I wanted.”
I’m a purist when it comes to phones. I’m a serious phone talker. I don’t need these distractions. Like crappy cameras and a calendar of events. The iPhone intimidates me because it forces you to multitask. And I’m not good at single-tasking. I can’t walk and hold a drink at the same time. Is there an app for that? Some kind of cup holder that pulls out and stabilizes based on how awkward a conversation is? It senses I’m about to expound on my personal theory of bisexuality and it vibrates out of control. I’d buy that app.
I asked the guy at the store for the simplest phone they had. I said, “Can I have just the ‘phone’ phone?”
And he was so confused. He was like, “Um . . . This one is a dot-matrix printer.”
I was like, “No . . . just the ‘phone’ phone.”
He was like, “This one makes Jolly Rancher Minis.”
I said, “No, just the ‘phone’ phone.”
I ended up getting the simplest phone they have. But it still does nine things I don’t understand. Nine. Maybe I’m a control freak, but that makes me nervous. I get worried: What if there’s something in the phone I don’t know about? What if there are bullets in the phone? Just hypothetically, what if I’m dialing a number and some passerby on the street is like, “You shot me!”
And I’m like, “Oh man, I was on the wrong screen. I thought that was a to-do list. I didn’t know it was actual bullets.”
And then he’s like, “You gotta get a doctor!”
And I’m like, “Good idea, where is that—under Tools?”
Phones have gotten way too complicated. They’ve got all these ringtones to choose from and I’m not really a ringtone guy. I’m purely a vibrations man. I don’t even understand why people have rings on their phones. We don’t need an electronic version of the Miami Vice soundtrack poisoning the peaceful silence we’re all enjoying. A vibration is loud enough if you think about it. It’s not as if a vibration is soundless. By definition vibration is sound. Besides, it feels nice when it vibrates, kind of a mini-massage, a little tingle to remind you you’re alive.
I love that little vibration. I’m addicted to that vibration. My phone vibrating in my pocket feels like being woken up as a kid on Christmas morning. Wake up, Mike, you’ve got a telephone call! It could be anyone.
Growing up, cable television was a luxury that only a few people we knew could afford. Not us—our family had the giant rotating antenna mounted on our garage,