Crazy for Smart Phones

Ms. Rachow would like to dedicate this column to Siri, the disembodied voice in her new mobile phone that did all historical fact checking for this piece.

While growing up in Nebraska, I didn’t dream it would one day be possible to delete emails and post to FaceBook while my husband drove our pooches and me to the beach.

Until just three weeks ago, I wondered why I’d even want to be so obsessively connected. But I confess…I’ve joined the hordes of zombies who are infatuated with constant connectivity.

My insanity was a long time in the making and involved a hundred or so marital “discussions.” The arguing began in 2007 when the first iPhone came on the market. My husband, being an aficionado of all new tech goodies, wanted to get on the smart phone track then, but we still had a contract with the wrong mobile provider…ya-da, ya-da…not a great financial idea to switch horses in midstream.

Besides, at that time we had year-old flip phones that were excellent in many ways. They had terrific sound quality and were so easy to operate I could make a call with one hand while keeping the other on the wheel and my eyes on the road. Using a handheld cell phone while driving was still legal in California in those ancient days.

Months passed, and with each generation of new smart phones, my techie husband would make the case for getting our mobile-phone butts out of the Dark Ages and into 21^st Century reality. Over a billion people worldwide had taken the plunge into a lifestyle where it was possible to be connected 24x7, no matter where one was or what one was doing.

It escaped me why it was so appealing to be on the Internet all the time. It seemed just crazy, mind numbing, whacky, insane, and stupid, stupid, stupid.

I said exactly that many times, but my husband’s not much swayed by emotional arguments. He grew up in the icy wasteland of Quebec where the slightest show of emotion can cause parts of one’s frostbitten face to fall off.

Of course, beyond the first year of marriage one does not win arguments by foot stomping alone. One must remember one’s spouse has inherited his father’s propensity toward pinching pennies.

Whenever the smart phone subject came up, I calmly asked, “What will our data plan cost once we get smart phones?”

Suddenly my thrifty husband would decide our ancient flip phones were gems to be cherished for as long as we both should live.

Nevertheless, he kept up on the new generations of smart phones. Via his research, I learned some users loved the BlackBerry, which seemed pleasantly fruity to me. And others liked the Android…a connected cell phone and a character in a sci-fi novel. My husband liked the iPhone best, although I never asked why.

It wasn’t my job to know all the details of mobile devices. My task was to blindly argue against all smart phones as the technology seasons came and went.

Our old flip phones continued to work well even as they became strange relics of a bygone era. It seemed there were grown men who’d been born after we first got those old phones. I was perversely proud of this, but I also noticed I was less and less willing to let anyone under 30 see me make a call. The flip phones were as embarrassing as our ever-more frequent invitations to join AARP.

However, it wasn’t embarrassment that finally tipped the argument. It was getting puppies.

It turns out if you have pups you need to photograph their every milestone.

“The new iPhone has a fantastic camera,” my husband said.

“We already have cameras,” I countered. But there was a crack in my voice. I already knew how challenging it was to share photos with our conventional cameras. Yes, the world could to wait to see our endless puppy shots, but when one is a new parent, one gets a little overly exuberant.

Still I dragged my feet. I hated to put our perfectly functional flip phones out to pasture. It wasn’t until my husband’s took an “accidental” header onto the pavement that I finally accepted the inevitable

This morning my husband washed cars and repaired the roof himself to save money to pay for the data plan on our new iPhones.

Now we’re off to the beach with dogs and these magical mobile devices. On the way there, I’ll delete emails from the AARP. On the way home, I’ll post the new shots of pups running in the surf.

Crazy? Yes. Happy? Oh, yeah.