I am not proud of my addiction to technology. Specifically, I loathe my electronic tether to my Blackberry. Aesthetically, it endears me with its lavendar color, tiny little buttons and familiar icons. I find myself drawn to it. Even when I have no messages or texts, I like to hold it in my hand. Feel its weight. Even Obama was so attached to his Blackberry, he practically wrote a new law saying that presidents could have them. It’s the first thing I look at in the morning when I wake up (it’s my alarm clock, as well as my touchstone).
And it’s gone.
I’m embarrassed that when I went to the Verizon store today and showed the salesperson my coffee drenched Blackberry, and he told me it would cost $450 to buy a new one, I cried. I cried like my toddler being told “You can’t have it.” I mostly cried for my own stupidity. How could I have not bought the insurance? It seemed like a rip-off at the time I was signing up for the service that already added an extra 40 dollars a month to my bill with web browsing and unlimited texting.
I’m not good with nice things. I ruin them. I’m klutzy by nature and careless by nurture. Today, I threw my beloved Blackberry into my work bag with a travel coffee mug I was SURE was empty. Apparently, there were a few drops that found their way into my precious phone. When I fished it out of my bag, it was hot from being fried. Hot to the touch. My heart sank because my carelessness resulted in a loss of something that was dear to me. I can’t afford to replace it.
Aside from being unable to afford it financially, I feel like I don’t deserve to get something brand new to replace something that I should have taken better care of. I feel like I need to learn a lesson here. I’m always lecturing my students about actions and consequences, so here is where I live my words.
Oh, but it hurts.
When I told Odie, “I ruined my phone,” there was a second where his face betrayed his initial reaction of “You really pulled a ‘Mrs. Odie’ this time.” He quickly replaced it with compassionate feelings, and argued with me when I told him I wanted to write on my blog that the first thing he thought was “Of course you ruined your phone, you jackass.” I insisted that his face told me that he was fitting this incident into a larger pattern of behavior on my part, but he counters that I’m projecting that, and what I really saw was his selfish “Oh NO! This is going to be expensive!” (you jackass).
Odie adamantly denies any feelings of condemnation of me or my actions. I suppose it’s possible that I am projecting that. I judge myself far more harshly than I judge anyone else, and if you’ve read the way I judge other people, well then, you can imagine what I’m in for.
I’ve decided to take this as an opportunity to cut my electronic leash. My Blackberry gave me my emails instantly, showed me Facebook updates, and delivered comments from my blog. I used it to check my blog stats a few times a day, and send text messages to my husband and sisters when I probably should have been paying more attention to the people I was in the room with right then. It has made me less patient by feeding my desire for instant gratification.
“Instant gratification takes too long!” Postcards from the Edge
A former student of mine who goes to UC Santa Cruz takes the time to have coffee with me whenever she is in town. During our most recent visit, I was particularly excited to talk to her, because I hadn’t “seen her on Facebook” in many months. She told me she had taken a break from it, and as a result had spent her time talking to people, going on adventures, and connecting in a more real way. She pronounced it amazing. The teacher becomes the student.
I work with people I haven’t seen in weeks. They know what’s going on in my life because I update my Facebook status. What if I walked up a flight of stairs during lunch, poked my head into Ms. Chan’s classroom, and asked her how she was doing, instead of clicking her Facebook profile? One of my closest friends works in the classroom across the hall, and I literally haven’t seen her face in a week. Don’t get too alarmed if I sound all “Carpe Diem” and shit (because Dead Poets Society is a bit too precious for me and I’ve always rolled my eyes at the whole “suck the marrow” scene), but I think that this Blackberry incident has the potential to push me toward a more authentic life.
Until Christmas, of course, when Odie goes on Ebay and finds me an affordable replacement.
Ever since I wrote an essay here on my blog contemplating God’s active participation in the minutia of our lives, I’ve received a bit of proselytizing about Jesus and such in the comments, so let me just nip THAT in the bud and say I don’t believe Jesus spilled coffee on my Blackberry to help him “see my heart.” I just think He has more important things to do than be involved in my wireless plan. I don’t think that’s what they mean when they say “God has a plan.” And I don’t think he’d go with Verizon. He seems more like an “Apple guy.” Oh! Maybe that’s the lesson here! God wants me to get an Iphone.
I’m going to be more present in my life. It drives me nuts as an instructor that my students can’t put their phones down for the 56 minutes I’m trying to teach them something. I used to have a principal who couldn’t sit through a conversation with anyone without looking at his phone while you were talking to him. It made me feel unimportant. I don’t want to make others feel that way. Especially not my child.
Because I have a child, I must have a phone. I shelled out my stupid tax of $109.00 to purchase a bottom of the line cell phone with no internet and no full keypad. Just a bare bones phone I can use to make and receive emergency calls. As of now, I’m five hours into Blackberry detox, and doing fine.
Stay tuned… I bloom, I bloom, I bloom…
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
It was a bad day
Today was a bad day. I have no pretty face to put on it. It goes without saying that I am grateful for all of the good in my life. But that doesn’t preclude the shitty day.
Baby V has her first ear infection and is on antibiotics for the first time. The smell of the cloyingly sweet bubble gum flavored medicine jolted me back in time to my infancy and early childhood. I was desperately ill as a baby. I had tubes put in my ears when I was nine months old and my adenoids removed at 18 months. I took so much of that bright pink liquid antibiotic as a kid, the smell of it has an effect on me not unlike a PTSD flashback. I opened the bottle and had to fight back the urge to sob and throw it on the floor.
Luckily, Baby V’s reaction was “Pink yummy! MORE!”
The eye drops? Not so much.
See, she also has an eye infection. If I thought that holding her down to use the bulb syringe on her snotty nose made me feel like a monster, imagine how much horror I had in store for me when I attempted to put eye drops in her sweet brown eyes, and she screamed, “Mommy, NOOO! Please, Mommy, HELP ME!” I thought I was going to lose it for real. And, yay, I get to do that to her three times a day for four more days.
I know that all mommy blogs eventually turn into the old clichéd “mommy complainer blogs,” and I really try to stay away from that. I love the mom stuff. I laugh at the poop. Having spit up on my shirt and in my hair never bothered me. Since I rent my house, when it would hit the carpet with a hearty “splat,” I simply shrugged. Among our three frequently puking pets, we lost our security deposit long, long ago. Sure, I bitched about the screeching phase she went through, and I bemoan my formerly spontaneous and athletic sex life. But I have nothing to complain about. Being a mom is the best thing I’ve ever done.
And I’ve acted with Kirk Cameron, Paul Rudd AND Brad Pitt.
What gets me is when she cries out in anguish. It triggers something in me from long ago, and I feel panicky and despairing. The sound of her voice when she said “Help me.” I get heart palpitations just reliving it here. Sometimes, it haunts me for a long time afterwards. It’s an ongoing challenge. When you become a parent, you know joy and love like you never imagined. And fear and pain like you never wished on your worst enemy. When people would tell me this before I had kids, my response was inevitably, “Then why the hell do you crazy fuckers do it?” Because you get through it, I guess. Even the really bad days.
We’re all sick here, chez Odie. It’s the common cold, becoming increasingly more common since Baby V waded into the virus swamp known as preschool. Odie stayed home with her because I stayed home on Monday, so it was his turn. We have ten sick days each this year, and I’ve already used four. And it’s October. I left my house this morning sad to leave them, but happy they were home together and I didn’t have to worry about them.
My classroom was in shambles from yesterday’s sub. The students had an assignment due today where they had to print a student journal for their reading books from the textbook website. That was the assignment. Click and print. I gave them four days to do it. Eight people in block one did it (out of 31). Twelve people in block two did it (out of 33). I felt deflated and defeated. A girl in my first period class had her head down on her desk, sobbing. I knew exactly how she felt. I was happy I remembered from our “Love and Logic” workshop not to ask her “Are you okay?” What a stupid question, right? I said, “Let me know if there is anything at all I can do for you. And feel free to get up and leave if you have to.” I said to her what I myself needed to hear. I hope it helped.
A coworker wrote on Facebook she thinks maybe teaching isn’t the job for her. I felt that way too, when halfway through my lesson block one, a boy loudly whined, “This is boring.” And later during second block, when my students just wouldn’t listen to me, I lost my cool just slightly, and it only made the situation worse. They wouldn’t do anything I asked them to do before, but once I was mad at them, they REALLY felt no need to please me. I stood there, ineffectual. Frustrated. Sore throat, stuffy nose, pounding head, and fighting back tears of self-pity. It was a bad, bad day.
For the second night in a row, my daughter didn’t want to go to sleep. “All done!” she said and signed as she climbed out of bed and ran from the room. It’s like that pink medicine is laced with caffeine or something. Usually she can barely keep her eyes open past seven-thirty, but last night she ran around the house until eleven and tonight, I wrestled with her for an hour. I understand how the “cry it out” method was invented. I do. I really, really do.
I don’t have some inspirational, “And then I put on my favorite bunny slippers and drank a latte and it was all grand” ending for this. I wrote a better lesson plan, watched some Chilean miners get rescued, indulged in some writing, and I’m going to bed and dreaming of a better day.
Share this: