Tragedy in Glendale

I suspect a heroin addict has a hard time remembering life before each day became a search for the next fix.  Similarly, I had forgotten what life was like -- just two years earlier -- before an iPhone, demanding all my attention, was never far from my trembling hand.

Going cold turkey is always hard -- even when it's only for a few days.  In my case, it's like losing a hand, my sight, and my ability to communicate.  It's like having suffered a stroke and finding it difficult to tell anyone of your plight.

It was a sunny day before Christmas in Glendale, California.  Denying myself use of a car, I had chosen to walk from my niece's home back to my motel.  Only a few blocks -- the walk would "do me good."  How bitter those words --  like darkest bile -- now taste in my mouth.

As usual, I carried my iPhone in the hip pocket of my jeans.  I crossed a street, reached the opposite curb, and bounded onto the sidewalk.  What happened next?  If I'd been skiing, I would say that I must have crossed  my tips.  But I was walking, and I have no idea what happened.  But the result was the same, as my body lunged forward and smashed to the pavement.  Two horrified observers asked if I was ok.  The pain was minimal, the humiliation was great -- I assured them of the first and ignored the latter.  I walked on briskly, pretending that I was a ten-year-old with hips made of  indestructible rubber.

But the real pain wasn't experienced until I reached the hotel, and pulled out my iPhone.  The glass pane on which I receive all the wisdom of the world, and on which my responses to said wisdom are plotted, was covered with spider-like tracks, like a car's windshield when hit by a stray pebble.  But you can still see through such a windshield -- the images on my iPhone, on the other hand, were now a mass of strange lines, curves, and colors.  Only a small portion at the top was untouched, just enough room to advise me that the phone was down to 57 percent of being fully charged.

To make an already long and tedious story shorter, the phone still could ring, still gave warning sounds when emails and texts arrived.  But I couldn't answer the phone or read the emails.  I couldn't control the phone at all through its touch-screen.  I couldn't even turn the phone off.

Back in Seattle today, I took it to a computer store that advertises its ability and willingness to replace cracked screens.  Unfortunately, when being wedged between my bony hip and the hard, cold ground, the body of the phone became slightly warped.  Warped enough that the store can't do the replacement itself.  They've agreed to send it out to be repaired by a more highly skilled laboratory, but it will take at least four days before I see the phone again.  At an expense, to me, of $130. 

Even so, that's a lot cheaper than buying a new phone.  And I won't lose all the contact information, photos, and other data that -- over the two years I've had the phone -- have been saved on the phone and nowhere else.  Which, I suppose, serves as a lesson to us all.  Heed the little warning sign that appears every week or so suggesting that you back up your phone "on the cloud."

The lessons are several, in fact, but won't be discussed further.  I'm simply happy that, unlike the junkie, I can look forward to resuming -- without guilt -- my addictive habits by the time the weekend arrives.