A night of drinking, my friends and I went to a mixer that had both the Swim Club and the Extreme Croquet Team. Since I am affiliated with the swim club I was allowed to go. Sometime during the night, as I was stumbling through a drunken crowd, my cell phone which I was holding suddenly fell into my beer cup. I immediately ran to the sink, took it out and started cleaning the phone with paper towels. Everywhere I looked was wet floors, and a wet kitchen counter. The cell phone continued to work until one of my friends accidentally knocked it into my cup again. When I went to clean it a second time, the screen would not turn on. I got really frustrated until someone told me to leave the phone in rice so it would absorb all the liquid. When I got home that night, I took out the battery and SIM card to place all the phone parts in a bowl of rice. Within the next two days, it was working.

            However, during the two days without a phone I felt that I did not really care. I went out those days like any other and although I couldn’t text anyone, I felt free because now no one knew where I was at all times. I walked on campus and took in a deep breath of fresh air. I noticed people walking and staring at their phones, but I was looking up at the sky, and the scenery. I saw the hawks gliding through the air, the arrangement of colorful hedges and flowers as well as the distant view of Mohonk Mountain. When I went home, my friends told me to get a newer and better phone. I said that I would wait until it healed. My cell phone is about five years old but still does the job. Before it was working again I felt that I didn’t need a phone anymore. I would probably be better off without one.

Since cell phones have become such a social need, people who don’t own one don’t seem to fit in or are out of the loop. Since all my friends have a phone and since it’s easier to communicate with some girl you just met at a bar, it seems more than reasonable to keep one. Once my phone began working again I wrote down all the numbers in my yellow book. Since then I’ve returned to my old habit of keeping the phone like a stuffed animal you leave by your bed each night. However, unlike Postman’s arguments, even though my cell phone is a part of my image, I can still live without one and it wouldn’t make a difference.