You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Being cut off from the world.
Like Tom Hanks blown out of an airliner and floating with Wilson, his volley ball friend in a stormy south pacific sea, I am technologically adrift.
It all starts at the end of my trip. My friend pulls up to the terminal and we say good-bye.
I jump out in a furry and grab my bag. I get make my way to the curb, getting out-of-the-way of the taxis and crazy Baltimore drivers.
My attention is suddenly on TSA screeners and sky caps barking.
I set my bag down and put my hand in my pocket.
TERROR. I feel panic. My stomach kicks me in my own groin.
It’s not there. I pat myself down like a crime suspect.
“Oh No!”
My iphone is gone.
I feel around my pocket for the soft shell. I crave the round curves that are sensual and familiar.
I look around frantically for my friend’s car. It has melted like an acid trip into a million other silver vehicles all coming and going on the top concourse of a very congested airport.
F***! F***! F***!
I scream loud enough for a Japanese couple getting their bags to hear.
I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry. I’m floored with panic. I want to push the old Japanese man with his cell phone into the front of the bus coming by.
In this new world of interconnectivity, I am alone.
I am Tom Hanks. Wilson my volley ball is suddenly floating away and I am helpless to stop it.
I open my bag knowing that the phone could not possibly be there. Why am I doing this? Why now? Why would an iphone be in my bag? 1 minute it was on the front seat with me as I checked sports scores while we drove. Did it magically transport itself into my luggage.
Still, I check.
Nothing.
I think back, piecing together the scene of the crime. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and let it drive away.
I sense airport security eyeing me suspiciously as if I’m Alqaida ready to blow up the luggage carousel.
I have to call my friend but I can’t. I don’t have the number. It’s in the phone. I want to call someone who can call my friend, but again, I cannot. Those numbers are all inside the iphone.
I feel like calling 911. Again, I have no iphone.
If only I could text her and say turn around. How easy, how instantaneous that would be. But I am a lost. I am a surfer who cannot swim, clinging to my board in an ever-increasing stormy sea.
Wilson the volley ball, my best friend is floating away, and I am helpless to do anything about it.
My phone is gone. My texting ability is gone. My email is gone. My work email gone. My phone contacts gone. My Southwest confirmation number gone. I can’t see if Lebron went off on the Celtics. I don’t know if that super cell over Missouri ever spawned a tornado. Is Paul Dead? I am the Walrus Coo Coo Cachoo!
F**! I exclaim again.
At least I have my wallet. At least I have my keys. At least I have my bag. What I don’t have is my sanity.
I walk into the terminal and I see people staring at their smart phones. I want to punch everyone in the face.
I feel like the kid in the neighborhood who didn’t get a new bike for Christmas.
I go to a couple of terminal employees.
“Excuse me. Do you know where the nearest pay phone is?”
They look at each other blankly.
I can see their brains accessing the question.
Pay phone? What the hell is that? Who is this moron?
Their stares are filled with question marks. It’s like asking a 3rd grader if they have a 401K
These Baltimore natives are like border crossers from Mexico.
Yo No Hablo they communicate with a shrug.
I go to a Maryland State Trooper. He is young and I wonder if he will even know what I’m talking about.
“Excuse me sir, I have lost my cell phone and need to make a call. Is there a pay phone here?”
His face becomes a study in concentration.
He says nothing for the longest time.
Inside my head I wonder if I should just go to the security check point and move on with my life.
The trooper is still thinking.
I listen to the over head announcement not to leave your car in the green zone.
I silently imagine that I dropped my iphone there and a fleet of buses carrying tourists going to Annapolis has crushed it into match sticks.
“I think,” the trooper says pausing again scanning the busy terminal.
I tune him out. I think about my iphone in a million pieces. I think about all the great memories from the weekend crushed in a technological pile of dog doo on the road.
I think about the pictures of my mom’s 70th birthday and the boat ride around the Naval Academy. I think about the video from Nationals Park and the Washington Monument from the left field flag pole.
For some reason I think about losing the video of the most anticipated baseball rookie in years, Bryce Harper. I videoed his first at bat of the game. On the first pitch he jacked a homer into the right field stands. I followed the ball and then his home run trot and people going nuts. It was 31 seconds long. I sent it to my son a minute later. 2 minutes he later he texted me back. “Cool.”
That is the instantaneous, finger punching, accessing every fleeting thought disseminated world that we live in. Now I am a homeless man living under a bridge fighting dragons in my head.
“I think there is a bank of phones at the far end of the terminal,” the kind trooper says.
I forgot why I even stopped to ask. Why do I care about a pay phone.
“Thanks,” I say just wanting to get away from Johnny Law man in case I scream F**! one more time.
I walk to a section of the airport reserved for billy goat gruff idiots and sanitation staff.
Hanging on the wall like some kind of shrine to Alexander Graham Bell are three pay phones.
They remind me of my youth when pay phones were on every corner, in every office buildings, at your local school.
Now there are 3 pay phones in one of the busiest airports in the world.
3 pay phones! They are empty. There is an empty can of coke in one. I pick up the telephone. There is a cob web attached to the receiver.
I look at the directions. I’m unclear how much money it takes to make a call. It says 50 cents for a local call.
I feel like yelling. Who am I calling?
I don’t know a single number. My ride is gone. Without my phone, the number might as well be the Pythagorean theorem carried to 9 decimal places. I have no clue even what the area code is.
Why would I?
In today’s world, you go to contacts and you look up a name and bam, instant connection.
Now I am driving a model T on the interstate and I’m getting run over.
I call the operator and listen to a long dissertation about the values and benefits of being a Verizon customer.
Finally a woman gets on and I ask to make a connect call.
I call my work where I know people are still ready to take a call.
I hear the operator say to the young woman in my office; “Will you accept a collect call.”
I hear silence. I can tell the young woman on the other end has never used a pay phone. She has probably never talked to an operator before. I know damn well she has never accepted a collect call at work.
The only saving grace is she knows my name. That’s a good sign. At least I wasn’t fired over the weekend and had yet to be notified.
“Yes I’ll accept the call she says.”
“Thank you,” the operator says and leaves the line.
“Andy, what the ….” she says pausing.
“I lost my cell phone,” I tell her. “I’m so screwed. it has everything in it.”
This woman is a 20 something. I’m talking to a human who knows the full ramifications of this moment.
“Oh my God. That’s horrible,” she says.
“Does it have a lost iphone app?” she blurts out.
“What?”
“It finds your iphone when it is lost.”
Now I am Mexican border crosser wondering what the hell she is talking about.
“How can i call an iphone with an iphone app if my iphone is lost?”
“Yeah,” she says like a California Beach girl in the 80’s.
“Look. Call my number. Maybe my friend will hear it and realize it is on the seat next to her. Maybe she’ll pick up. If she does, tell her to turn around, to call this pay phone number. I will meet her outside.”
“OK,” the young girl says with alacrity. “I’ll call you back in five minutes.”
I hang up. I watch every human in the terminal walking around staring at their phone. Old people are playing words with friends. Young people are taking pictures of their neck tattoos and posting them to facebook. Businessmen are moving that same Facebook stock to something more profitable and I am standing by the bathroom, next to the janitorial station, clinging to an ancient piece of telecommunication history that most people don’t even see when they walk by.
Ring.Ring. Ring.
I laugh. It is an old school ring. Not some Def Jam, funky cold medina, space alien laser blast chirp from a smart phone.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Young people stare at it as if they have suddenly heard a beautiful opera for the first time in the hip hop grind while you dance church of Jay Zee.
Hello, I say.
“Nobody picked up,” she says sadly. “I’m so sorry. Are you ok?”
I laugh. I don’t answer. I’m not sure how to respond. I am physically ok. I have my wallet so I guess I still have my id. I am still who was 20 minutes ago, but somehow I feel different. I feel like a part of me is gone.
“Yeah, I’m cool. I guess I will just head home and figure it out.”
“Good luck she says with a click.
I go the Southwest line and clench my fist. I am so mad. I cannot believe I just left something so important in the front seat of something that is driving away.
It’s like leaving your lungs at the starting block of a swim race.
“Do you need a boarding pass?”, the woman says.
“Yes.”
“Use that Kiosk”, she says as if i am a Cambodian boat person who cannot read.
“I don’t know my code” I say.
“You don’t have it in your phone she says?”
I roll my eyes.
“i lost it.”
She looks at me as if I have been attacked by a pack of wild Rottweilers.
“Oh poor thing. Get in that line” she says. “They’ll help you.”
I feel like the kid on the short bus. I am disconnected. I am in line shuffling forward like a cow getting ready to be slaughtered only I don’t know it.
I don’t see it coming.
I get my boarding pass. I get through security. I read the Washington Post while every other person waiting to board explores the world on their tiny screens.
I am furious when the flight attendant tells me to turn off my electronic device.
I land and watch all the smart phones illuminate moments after the wheels hit the ground.
I get in a cab and fume as the Somali driver wonders why I am so mad.
I go into my work and fire up my computer. I finally am connected to the global network.
I feel a pulse, a surge of life reconstitute in my tired disconnected soul.
I get into my contacts and see my friends number.
It is midnight there. I don’t care. I call.
“Hello.”
“I am an idiot,” I say. “I left my phone in your car.”
“Yep. I got it. I’ll over night it to you. It’ll cost you a king’s Ransom.”
Thanks I say hanging up.
I feel better knowing that I will be reunited with my technological volley ball in a few days.
As I drive home, I think about the feeling of being out of touch. It is like being deprived of one of your senses. It makes you appreciate other senses.
It makes me realize how much the world has changed, how much we depend on information and technology.
If Al Quada wants to bring down this society. Don’t fly a plane into a building.
Take away our smart phones. We will be paralyzed and without hope. We will sit in despair, staring at a pay phone on the wall wondering how it works.
Take away our blackberry’s and iphones and ipads and kindles. And the terrorists will have all ready won.
Wilson!
And that is crazy™