I didn't get a cell phone until long after most of my peers had already gone through two, and when I did get one, mine still had a tiny screen and was black and white.  It also wasn't a flip phone, and at that point, the flip phones were the cool ones.  It also wasn't technically a 'real' cell phone.  It was a tracfone from a drug store and I was only allowed to use it for emergencies, like calling my mom to tell her that I was going to be getting home from school late.  …I was a senior in high school…it was 2005.

(This is the kind of tracfone they make NOW.  I would have been awesome if I'd gotten that kind in 2005...)

Up until I got that little tracfone, I always had to bum cell phones off of my peers the way chain smokers have to beg for other people's cigarettes.  Sometimes, I was too embarrassed to ask.  Because at that point, I was still operating with a heightened sense of what people might be thinking about me.  I really wanted them not to think I was weird, and constantly borrowing their phones was not going to put me where I wanted to be.  I always thought I could detect a slight hesitation or a gleam in their eyes that balanced between amused and judgmental.  So in those situations, I would go up to the office and use the school's phone.  The office was small and the phone was in an area with a lot of foot traffic.  That meant that I had to sort of squish up next to shelves that the phone was on, and hunch over.  I also didn't want everyone who was going in and out of the office to know that I was calling my mother to let her know my after school plans, so I wound-up talking as fast as I could in hushed tones.  I also tried to develop a way of saying as little as possible in a vague way so that my mom might understand my intent, but so that no one else would be able to figure out what I was talking about.

"Hello?"

"Hi!"  I wouldn't say "Mom."  Instead, I would opt to be overly cheery and familiar and hope that she recognized my voice.

"Hi, Peeper."

"I have to work on a group project for Southern Hemispheres for a couple of hours.  We have to do research on the blood diamonds in the Congo."  I made sure that I wasn't asking permission.  That way, anyone going by could feasibly think that I was grown up enough to be doing what I wanted and was just telling the person on the other end of the phone what my plans were.

"Oh, ok.  Is Kaye staying?"  Kaye was a friend of mine who lived in my neighborhood and went to high school with me.  We carpooled.  She drove sometimes, I drove sometimes.

"Yes."  I was always glad when that worked out, because otherwise my mom would get after me about having to drive out to pick me up.  And when she was coming to get me, I always got anxious because if I was late, she'd get upset.

"Okay.  I'll see you when you get home.  I love you."  I dreaded those three words.  Because it was my mom I couldn't ignore them without hurting her feelings.  But saying them back would be a dead giveaway.

"Iloveyoutoo.  BYE!"  I would mumble back before giving a loud and explosive goodbye that I hoped would overshadow the "I love you."

"Bye, sweetie."

Then we'd hang up and I'd breathe a sigh of relief at having conducted the whole conversation while staying relatively incognito.  In retrospect, of course, I probably looked incredibly odd, speaking quietly and facing the wall.

When I got my tracfone, everything changed.  Then I no longer had to suffer the indignity of borrowing other people's phones or using the office line.  I could just go stand out of the way, next to a bush somewhere, and make my call.  Of course, I was HORRIBLE at remembering to bring the phone with me.  More often than not I'd be late to pick Kaye up and I'd rocket out of the house, leaving the phone, still charging, plugged into the wall.  Then, unfailingly, my mom would try to call me, realize I didn't have the phone, and get peeved.

She made me put a sticky note on the back door.

"PHONE??" It said.

I still occasionally forgot it.

Eventually, I got better.  Finally, all childish naivete regarding phone ownership was stamped out and I started feeling like I'd gone out without pants when I forgot my phone.  Then something bad happened: I figured out that I didn't actually like the fact that people could theoretically get a hold of me whenever they wanted, regardless of what I wanted.  I started to go full-circle.  Conscientiously.

Now I am probably one of the most annoying people to get in touch with ever.  I purposefully leave my phone in places where I won't hear it.  I also purposefully ignore phone calls if I don't feel like I'm in the mood to chat on the phone, which, recently, is just about always.  Unfortunately, when I ignore a call, I am overcome by guilt, and I go about my business thinking about how I ignored a phone call and how that probably makes me a bad person.  That's why I took to leaving my phone in places where I won't hear it.

However, that presents another problem.  When I return to my phone after having intentionally abandoned it, I'm usually scared to check it for fear of seeing 10 missed calls and 3 or 4 angry messages from people who are like, "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU PICK UP YOUR PHONE YOU HAVE A PROBLEM."  Because I already know that I have a problem and their anger is not helping anything.  And I don't like it when people get angry at me.  I usually get a little frantic.

Sometimes I just turn it off for hours at a time.  That way, I can feign absentmindedness and tell people that it died.

I should come up with some kind of solution for this, but sometimes all I really want to do is "accidentally" drop my phone off of our balcony...