Day Thirty-Nine: The Story of My Demon Phone

Sit back, dear children, and let me tell you a story. It is a story of pain, confusion, suffering, addiction, and being really pathetic. It's the story of dropping my phone in a sink full of water.

About a year ago, I was in my friend's apartment getting ready to go out on a good ole' night on the town. After one of the ladies left the bathroom after her primping session, I strolled in, phone-in-hand, and prepared to relieve myself. Not realizing that the sink didn't drain properly (or have a completely flat surface), I set my beloved outer-body organ on the edge of the vanity while I prepared to do what I had to do. And then I watched, in horror, as my huge, computer-like monstrosity of a cellular device slipped gracefully into the sink and readily submerged itself in soapy water.

Naturally, I panicked. No, I didn't just panic, actually -- I threw a complete and utter freak-out fit. Now before you think me a technophile (if that's a word) and someone who treats their phone like a member of their family (which I don't...I drop it all the time. I don't drop my family members), I need to explain the significance of my cell phone, to those who may not know. My boyfriend, whom I love very much and am actually pretty attached to, gave me my phone as an early birthday gift. Actually, it was the first gift he ever gave me, that wasn't a small token of thought. And although he didn't buy it, he still worked very hard to get it, by talking to people and asking favors. So after doing some tricky thinking and talking to sales guys at his work, he nabbed a brand-new, free, Tony Hawk Sidekick LX leftover from a promotion. So, not only is it a pretty damn cool phone, but it as some significant sentimental value. He also presented it to me right before we left for our first major vacation: a nine-hour drive to Cleveland to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So, my friends, I was watching something pretty important to me (and something I text people on....a lot....) fall into a sink full of water. Thus, I did freak out. But I think it was somewhat warranted. But thankfully, after a lot of hair-dryering and refrigerating, and TLC, it made it through the night, and lived to tell the tell, little worse for wear. But as I watched it twitching and turning itself on and off, flashing its multi-colored lights, and turning the volume up and down on its own, I thought it was a gonner.

I was reminiscing about this amusing story today, because as a scar due to its quick submersion, my phone, every few months, will drain its battery immediately and turn itself off, absolutely dead until charged for at least 15 minutes. It happened to do just that today, conveniently after I received a phone call I had needed. But it always comes out of its coma just fine, and hopefully it will last me as long as a normal, unharmed phone should.

Day Sixteen: Do We Make Ourselves Miserable?

I think my life is pretty common in that, as the saying goes, "when it rains, it pours." When one thing goes wrong, at least one other major tragedy puts more than a hiccup in my day, thus making the first ripple in the wave of unpleasantry harder to overcome. From what I can tell, most people have the same mark on their own lives. If a car breaks down, the paycheck that would pay for it is lost. If a family member becomes ill, a family heirloom will get lost somewhere in the house, never to be found. And usually, both experiences magnify each other, making the other seem more important and tragic. Since the situation is so difficult, is life trying to tell us something by sending us sometimes an almost overwhelming plethora of horrible?

I'm not entirely sure if I'm a believer in the idea that there are "tests" in life that are meant to make us stronger and help us better understand ourselves and what is most important to us, but I still believe there has got to be something to this strange little phenomenon of life. Do the planets align just right to make our lives fall apart little bits at a time every once in awhile? I don't know of anyone (who hasn't had a real, major tragedy occur in their lives, like a child dying or a house burn down) who has steadily had a regular pattern of bad happening to them over a course of time. It always comes in clusters of multiple annoyances and tragedies that put a real cramp in a day, week, or even month. But the possibility also exists that such things don't happen in multiples, and that people are just more mentally weak when they're emotionally distraught, so other, smaller problems that they would otherwise be able to handle seem mountainous. Excuse me, but I need to get philosophical for a moment.

How much of our tragedy to we create? If there is nothing to fear but fear itself, is there nothing to feel sorrowful about than sorrow itself? If someone close to a person dies, they feel sorrow because they are gone, but they also have the potential to feel happiness because they are no longer suffering, or because they've possibly just left to experience another plane of existence that might be pretty damn cool. So who knows, they might actually be the lucky ones. Although this is a pretty far-fetched reality, it is possible. We are capable of feeling anyway we make ourselves feel. If we choose to embrace tragedy and remind ourselves of the negative aspects of a situation, are we causing our own pain?

Partially, I think my own theory could very well be a load of crap. While it's possible to try to change the way we feel about certain situations, we can't help our subconscious from being truly upset about something that makes us unhappy. But it is an interesting thing to think about. I know more than once, I have been what seemed like unbearably unhappy about something, and then suddenly I physically could not feel sorrow anymore, so I stopped, immediately. I literally woke up, and wasn't sad or angry about my situation anymore. So either that was my body's way of telling my brain to stop going haywire because my sadness would start physically affecting my health soon, or I subconsciously decided I didn't want to deal with waking up sad anymore. I don't think I've lived enough to know whether or not this is true, but it definitely is worth pondering. Do you think you make yourself sad?