Call me for some overtime, call me in a sweet design

About a week after I got to camp, the battery charger for my cell phone started getting all wonky: not working half the time, and when it was working, making all these weird beeping noises, and making the screen on my phone light up. So when my parents dropped in for a visit, that night after the Biltmore, my dad and I ran up to the Sprint kiosk in the Asheville mall to see about getting me a new charger.

So I wait for the fat, goateed guy to get done flirting with the girl in front of me (which took about 20 minutes) and I walk up to the counter and tell him what the problem is, and he asks to see my phone and the charger. So I pull out my phone and show it to him and he actually starts laughing at me.

Yes, my phone is 5 years old, but it's small, and pretty, and compact, and I really love it. It fits my face just right, does everything I need (I don't need or want a camera, or the internet, or texting, or any of that other stupid bullshit that you have to get on phones now), and it's been with me through a lot. Granted, I tend to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects like cell phones, but I can't help it. I'm nothing if not overly and ridiculously sentimental.

So after he gets done not so silently mocking me, the guy tells me that he can sell me a new charger for $20, or just upgrade my phone for $18, but he's not even sure the charger is the problem: it could just be the phone.

So I decide to go for the upgrade option. I had the internet service blocked, because it was an extra $5 a month, and if I ever use the internet on my phone I want whoever's near me to shoot me in the face, but I now have a camera, texting, and a whole plethora of other gadgets and contraptions that I have no idea how to use, and hopefully never will.

But I hate the phone. It's surprisingly a little bigger than my old one, doesn't fit on my ear or face as well, makes these hideous chiming sounds whenever I hit the buttons (which I can't figure out how to turn off, despite having read through the book several times, so I guess I just can't), has an awful (awful!) selection of ringtones and message tones, and the screen doesn't constantly display the time and date like my last phone did, so it just looks like it's turned off all the time. Whereas my other phone I could just glance at to see any of that information, and it even had a nifty little flashing red light that showed me I had a new voice message.

But it's so indicative of my life (and probably emotional maturity) that I still can't throw my old phone away. It's sat on my dresser in my cabin at camp, stone cold dead for 2 weeks now, utterly and completely useless, but I can't bring myself to throw it out.

I miss it. It's sad. We got along so well and had such a great connection.

But if you feel like sending me random text messages now, you can. I probably won't return them, but hey, if you're lucky I might. Or you can just be happy with the knowledge that I got your message while I was at camp and it most likely made me smile.