Connections

I was just about to the head of the line at Security when I realized I was naked. This was not the dream where you appear in front of a crowd in the nude, to great ridicule. This was painfully real. I looked back over my shoulder ad the people standing stoically in line behind me.

My phone was missing!

My mind raced. I was in the midst of stripping off the heavy southwestern silver band of my watch, pulling my ID, transferring my wallet to my briefcase and otherwise removing everything from my pockets to pass through the metal detector. Shit! No phone!

I wondered if I could get out of line and drag my bags down to the tunnel and under the valet lot to the parking structure I could see out of the distance through the soaring glass windows of the main terminal at Dulles.

Shit! Double shit! There was no time, and the lady behind me coughed to make me keep moving forward. I made it through the metal detector just fine- there was no phone to be x-rayed, after all, and I wondered what I was going to do.

The phone was the only way I was going to find my co-workers. There was a business call I needed to make, and had intended to sue the down-time waiting for the airplane to get it done.

Payphone, I thought, and then I realized the numbers I needed were stored on the memory list on the phone, and that to call long distance I would need a calling card. I had no change in my pocket, and who can afford 38-cents a minute, anyway?

Lost. I was completely lost. I stood at one of the banks of phones that no one uses any more and tried to recall how to dial my service provided. Let’s see: 1-800-225-5288 is the access, “call ATT” was how I remembered it, then “1” for calling card, then the number, nine digits, then the nineteen numbers of the major credit card with expiration date. I squinted at the card, trying to see the little numbers.

The keypad on the phone was sticky, and the numbers jumbled as I pressed the keys. I wondered who the last person was that used this phone, and what they died of.

I remembered that there used to be people who lurked in terminals, stealing the access codes of people using the phones. I tried to block the view of my hands from the curious, but it was hard, waving the card around, jabbing at the keys.

It took me three tries, or around 123 stabs at the phone with my index finger. I got through to someone’s voicemail I had never heard of. I must have had the number I was dialing wrong. I don’t remember phone numbers anymore. Part of my brain is now apparently attached to my belt, and it was missing in action.

We use these little things for address books, internet connections, GPS locators, calendars, games songs and video. How did anyone conduct an affair before the cell phone? Any sort of affair?

I jammer on it constantly, walking around, and above all when I am driving. The world is converging into a tiny box. I kept feeling the little clip on my belt, thinking somehow that the phone might have grown back. Next generation of these things I will just have it implanted where I cannot put it down on the seat next to me and then walk away from it.

I got on the plane, and we lurched into the air around the scheduled time. It was packed, and the flight number that suggested this was a non-stop to San Diego, but of course it wasn’t. We were headed for Denver, where we would change planes to continue the same flight.

Beats me, I thought. The complexities of life elude me sometimes. The layover was long enough that I might be able to make a phone call while I waited.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. I had no idea how much I depended on total access, all the time. Maybe there is an upside to being out of touch. I don’t know. But it has been a long time since I was connected to anything by payphone. I feel a little like Dwight Eisenhower, after he left the White House.

The General had forgotten how to drive a car. I haven’t forgotten how to talk, but it is disconcerting not to be able to, isn’t it?

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicocotra.com

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