Linesch 1 Sarah Linesch Dr.

Erin Dietel-McLaughlin Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric 13 September 2013 Returning to the Real World Sarah Sarah. SARAH Im talking to you! What? I said confusingly as I looked up at my best friend Hannah, who stared across the table at me with an annoyed glance. We were eating lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, Tiny Boxwoods, and I was too busy reading about Kim Kardashians failed marriage on Twitter to notice Hannah trying to get my attention. Sorry, what were you saying? I replied, as I set my phone down and then proceeded to bite into my avocado turkey sandwich. Are you ready to go? Hannah asked. Yeah I mumbled, as I stuffed the last bite of my sandwich in my mouth and got up to leave. As we drove away in Hannahs car, I reached into my pocket to plug my phone into the auxiliary cord. That's when I felt it: emptiness. The place that housed my phone countless times in the past was now flat and lacking that familiar boxy imprint. Back and forth I went, checking each pocket over and over, hoping that it would somehow magically appear, but to my dismay I found nothing. "Turn around!" I yelled at Hannah. "Hurry, I can't find my phone!" Hannah, who isn't known for her safe driving, sped down the street faster than the speed of light, so that in an instant we were back inside the restaurant. Like a detective on the trail for clues, I questioned every employee with determination and examined every inch of our table, hoping to find a small inkling of where my phone could have gone. After about twenty minutes of frantically searching the small caf, I gave up all hope.

Linesch 2 "Well that's it," I thought. All of my contacts, photos, emails, and access to the digital world were gone. The ride home was like a funeral processiona silent homage to the death of my phone. When I arrived home, I learned that I didnt have a phone update for another three weeks, so the cost to replace my phone would be around three hundred dollars; an amount of money that I currently didnt have. I couldnt help but think back to my sixth grade year. This was the year I first got braces, the year it snowed in Houstona rare occurrence which required school to be canceledand most importantly the year of the cell phones. It was a gradual process, denoted by the sudden appearance of glitter phone cases, but eventually all of my friends owned a cell phone except for me. During this time, I begged my parents daily for a cell phone, trying to explain to them how I was the only girl without one, but the response was always the same: Youre too young to have a cell phone. You dont need a phone, you can just use our house phone. And the ever famous, Just because all your friends do something, doesnt mean that you have to do it too. Text messaging became the new means to make weekend plans, and it became too difficult for my friends to call my house phone to invite me. Lunchtime turned into a discussion about who had the coolest ringtone, and classes had turned into a giant text conversation that I couldnt be a part of. As agonizing as sixth grade was, I knew my only option was to wait out the three weeks until my upgrade was available. The first few days were rough. It became difficult to make plans because I didnt have a constant means of communication and had to rely on my home phone. I

Linesch 3 couldnt check my Twitter or Facebook while I went out, and instead had to wait until I got home to sift through the hours of posts. I was completely out of touch with the digital world and soon a feeling of isolation set in. After about a week of being phoneless, I was talking with some friends about our upcoming plans for the weekend. Suddenly there was a break in the conversation and I looked up to see every single one of my friends on their phones, either texting or checking social medias. As the days passed, I began to notice this trend other places as well. Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, people would immediately pull out their phones, instead of trying to start a new conversation. Is this what I do too? I wondered. Why had I never noticed this oddity before? Without my phone to constantly keep me occupied, I started to notice little details around me. I noticed that new neighbors had moved in across the street from us, that my dad had planted new flowers in our front yard, and that the restaurant down the street from my house was now open for dinner. Instead of tweeting my thoughts, I began to talk about them with other people. Maybe, not having a phone wasnt as bad as I originally thought. I had never considered that my social life was controlled by a tiny screen until I was removed from the digital world for three weeks. My experience without my cell phone led me to a scary realization: I hadnt been controlling my phone; my phone had been controlling me. By losing contact with the digital world, I regained contact with the real world and began to notice the little details of my daily life. When the time came to get my new phone I felt ecstatic, but a part of me knew that I would miss my time being digital less. I wasnt the same young girl from sixth grade whose social life relied on a cell phone. With each passing day during those three phoneless weeks, I broke free of my digital constraints and learned to live in the real world again.