It wasn’t that many years ago that anyone who had a mobile phone was thought of as a total wanker. It took a while before they were generally accepted in Australia and they used to be gigantic and barely mobile (check out the one Danny Glover uses in the first Lethal Weapon movie). Now everyone has one. Listening to the radio reports of the earthquake in Christchurch and hearing time after time how people are using their phones to call for help from under the rubble makes me realize how much we rely on them. Every time there are situations such as this we hear of these kinds of things happening including people calling after their boat sinks or when they are lost in the bush. A mobile phone has become an essential bit of kit. Imagine where we would be if they suddenly stopped working! I say this because unforseen circumstances caused me to be without mine for 12 hours. 12 hours. This is my excuse for posting so late today as I felt that getting my phone back and regaining my sanity would be a better way for you to get something coherent out of me.
Don’t get me wrong, when we go away we will be without phones, flushing toilets and proper showers for a week and enjoy every minute of it. We took the kids on a road trip to Ayres Rock for 5 weeks last year and had no telly and only intermittent phone all that time and each time we came back into phone range we had trouble remembering where they were packed in order to check if we had missed anything important in the world. The thing that made it hard this time was that I was expected to just go about my normal life and remember everything by myself. I wasn’t on holiday and in normal life everyone relies on me to make sure things get done. Everyone thinks I am quite organised person but my little black friend beeps constantly to remind me of everything. Without it my life was over. The kids even had to wake me up this morning as the phone is also my alarm! I spent all day sure I had forgotten something important and not being able to check what that thing was.
It is ridiculous how much I rely on my little black auxiliary brain to tell me the things I need to know and constantly reminding me not to be late. If I was an important person I would have a downtrodden assistant scurrying around my feet reminding me of the things an important person has to do. As I am a normal person I was the one scurrying around getting my assistant back and vowing to never be without it again.
Now, excuse me. I have to go and walk to the shops. That important thing I couldn’t remember earlier was paying the rego on my car…grrrrr….
