A-YO I'm Tired of Using Technology

My IPhone decided to roll on a sword and die on Thursday morning. It had no visible scratches, no warning of impending doom, it just went white...and then I couldn't see anything on the screen at all. Most of you are probably thinking that, like most phones, I could take it to a store and they could then fix it. Well, not only does the IPhone not have a battery that you can remove (you actually have to break the phone into pieces to get to the battery), but the IPhone is not insured (a lesson I learned the hard, and way too expensive, way after accidentally leaving my first IPhone in a cab after formal). Therefore, my only solution became for me to wait until the store nearby got its first shipment of the 4g phones, and pray to the god of all that is technologically yummy that I got one of them.

Now, some of you might think that my phone died at an opportune time, as I could get the rebate and buy the new phone for less, but to think that you must not understand what it means to actually NEED such a novel technology at the same time that virtually everyone else in the world WANTS it. I am not a line lover, or a crowd lover, and the idea of having to wake up at 7:00 am to get in line to get a FREAKING PHONE is just so beyond my comfort zone, or anything I would ever choose to do. But, thanks to the untimely death of my phone (and the fact that even waiting 4 days without one has made me feel like I lost a computer/watch/all contact with all the outside world in one), I had to suck it up and be one of THOSE people.

We got to the store around 7:45 am (it opened at 9 am), and luckily there were only 2 other cars waiting. One more car arrived and suddenly, the flood gates opened and everyone got out of their cars to form a line (perhaps because they were only expecting 5 phones total). During my line experience, I learned that the people who purchase IPhones actually are rather intelligent chaps that I could be friends with (one dude started his own music studio-he was maybe 23?- and it was now the biggest one for private lessons in Florida, and another girl was a PhD student in Medical Physics), and that I should thank my parents for moving out to the boondocks of Florida where the AT&T store is not listed on Google and the surrounding population has much less Apple Nutjobs. I learned from the girl in line that she had waited for 2 hours at WalMart only to be told that they had only received one phone, which went to the person who ditched his wife and kids and camped out from 11 pm the night before, and that the stores in Gainesville (which, mind you, is still not a huge city), told people they would only get a phone if they waited from the night before as ultimately the lines were over 60 people long. GEEZ. No wonder shit was bananas (B-A-N-AN-AS) in New York City with over a quarter mile line at just one store and people selling their line spots for hundreds of dollars (recession genius).

Anyway, after waiting for about an hour, the store manager finally arrived and informed us that AT&T had delayed the shipment of phones and it had not arrived last night. Instead, it would arrive around 10:30 am in Daytona (about 1 and a half hours from here) and he would be driving down to get it immediately (precious cargo people). Then, once he got back to the store, he would call us and give us a chance to grab the phones before they went to other people who were not up at the crack of dawn. He was even kind enough to offer to hold our phones until the close of the day for those working (assuming he had enough for all of us), even though apparently it was forbidden by AT&T to even hold them at all. So, I put my name and number on a list (in second position..yes!), and waited anxiously by the phone for news of my phone's arrival, something I never in my life thought I would have to do.

At around 11 pm I decided to work out even though we had heard no news, informing my mom to "come get me if we needed to run out". 2 hours of a work out later...we still had heard...nothing. I tried to call the store and sort of received a blow off response of "we'll call you when it is here"...so we decided to stop in on the way to physical therapy just to make sure they weren't selling the phone that was rightfully mine. Unfortunately, the post office was just wrong (and was its' typical slow self) and they told us to expect the call around 4 or 5 pm. Fast-forward to post-therapy, a brief drive-by of the parking lot at AT&T to see if there were any cars that would imply the phones were in (ie. more than just the car of the store employee), and another 2 hours later, and finally, at around 6 pm, we got the call. Though the timing of this call was perfect for both getting soaked by the downpour outside and messing up my mom's dinner cooking timing, we ran out the door and drove as fast as we could to the store. Yet, still somehow, I was still almost the last of the 5 people called to arrive. Luckily, I had wanted the phone with the more memory, because I would've been stuck with it, and the extra cost, anyway.

An entire day later, and an expected expense later, and I finally have the phone in my hand. While it is still too early to truly answer the question: Was it worth it?, and who knows if I ever will even think so, I know one thing is for sure...I may not be able to drive right now and I may be feeling a little trapped in the boondocks, but I finally have communication back with the outside world and I WOULDN'T trade it...for anything.