Technology has never agreed with me. As a second-grader, I dutifully sharpened my No. 2 as my classmates whipped out fancy mechanical pencils. In high school, I listened to mix tapes while my friends blasted mp3 players. When I got an iPod as a present before college, I superstitiously left it in the box under my bed for eight months, convinced that opening it would unleash some sort of technological demon into my otherwise Luddite lifestyle.
So it’s probably not surprising that until this time last year, I didn’t have a cell phone.
Why not? At first, I just didn’t need one. I lived in a small town, and when my friends wanted to hang out, they just came over. If I wasn’t home, they knew where the fridge was and how to amuse themselves until I got back. It wasn’t until my freshman year at Georgetown, when everyone whipped out a phone and began exchanging numbers, that I realized this was kind of weird. One guy asked if I’d left my phone in my room. “Um, yeah,” I mumbled in reply. (Because it’s the kind you plug into the wall, I thought to myself.)
I sort of meant to get one, but those complicated plans and contracts intimated me. The longer I went without a phone, the more convinced I became that not having a cell phone wasn’t simply a quirk, but rather a calculated measure of restraint in a culture permeated with instant gratification. That, and cell phones are annoying. I would never be like that guy on the Rossyln shuttle, delivering a long-distance lecture to his mother on foreign oil dependence, or one of those whimpering girls having 2:00 a.m. conversations with long-distance boyfriends in the hallway outside of my room.
As time wore on, I got attached to the idea that rejecting technology signified a bohemian, responsibility-free existence. Everyone with their cell phones and iPods and fax machines could just go work at Merrill Lynch and rape the earth. I would be barefoot and bake vegan cupcakes, the American answer to Amelie, sprinkling joy wherever I went, free from the onerous burden of communicating with others.
But what about emergencies, my friends demanded? Cell phones can be lifesaving devices. To which I say, well, so are defibrillators, but I’m not going to lug one around with me. Not having a cell phone was an inconvenience to everyone but me, and my friends, dear and patient people that they are, tolerated my self-righteousness with remarkable grace. They resigned to communicating with me via Facebook messages and notes slipped under the door.
If anyone ever hinted that not having a phone was in any way slightly less than responsible, I’d just put on an air of pious self-denial, and say, “well, not everyone can afford luxury electronic items.” That usually shut them up.
To be honest, though, not having a cell phone was primarily a way for me to shirk responsibility. Because I didn’t have a phone, no one could get a hold of me. My editor at the Voice couldn’t call me to nag me to turn in my pieces, and my dad couldn’t quiz me on my grad school plans. Not having a cell phone was the perfect loophole to avoid becoming a productive member of society.
Furthermore, on a campus where everyone seemed to me to be both monotonously alike and intimidatingly intelligent, not having a cell phone allowed me to distance myself from a population of students that, given the chance, might even have become my friends.
All of this changed two days into my study abroad program. I was midway through a bout of drunken Facebooking when I spilled a cup of soup across the keyboard of my laptop, rendering it useless. Four thousand miles away from home, being distant and unreachable suddenly lost its appeal. The next day, I walked into the O2 store and said, with none of my trademark self-importance, “One cell phone, please.”
