Other: My New Phone

My new phone, with special lock guard!

I have a new phone. It's an HTC Hero, and, well, it made me really popular at work. For about 5 minutes. I'd been putting on the decision to get a new phone, because (a) I'm cheap, (b) I'm lazy, and (c) cheapness + laziness actually make me relatively environmentally friendly, at least as far as not acquiring and disposing of more electronics. (My only TV set still has a cathode ray tube. But, hey, the thing works.) But in the case of my (now old) phone, there's a (d). My father got me that phone the last Christmas I spent with him, 3½ years ago.

He had been asking me what he could get me that year, but I had nothing I needed or wanted. Then the $&%^^$%(* shuttle service came thisclose to making me miss my flight to Florida on Christmas Eve Day, and when I slammed the phone I had at the time shut after making no headway with their customer disservice, I broke the hinge. Arriving at the airport in Florida: "Dad, I know what you can get me..."

Here's how not-bleeding-edge I am. The phone I ended up picking out at the store was the same one my parents both already had (Motorola Razr). Then when the clerk went to transfer the contacts stored in my old phone into the new one, he pointed out that there were, like, 10. Which caused my father to mock me, since he had dozens and dozens in his.

So, even though I know it's silly, that Razr has memories. But it started getting confused over how much charge the battery did or did not have, and I started missing work calls. My father would have thought it was silly to keep it as long as I did, but I think he would still have been secretly pleased that it mattered. But he also would have thought my new phone was pretty cool. If he hadn't already gotten one for himself first.