Suddenly, without warning, my iPhone 3Gs died a few days ago. I had just finished a call when the screen flickered, then went blue, then showed only zigzag lines, then went white, then went blank. Or something like that. And I panicked.
All that afternoon, it refused to turn on. When it finally did in the evening, it lasted just long enough for me to frantically back it up, then died again. More flashes of blue, white, zigzag lines and all that. I declared its time of death, mourned, and made plans to inherit my mum-in-law’s old iPhone 4.
As I was driving the next day, I thought about how well my phone had served me, and how it’s been through everything with me in the last two years. A lot has happened in these two years, and yet it didn’t seem like so long ago when I’d first bought it.
I thought about a tattered, worn little notepad I carried everywhere with me in my bag, just in case I needed to write something down. That’s been with me for, I think, almost five years now. And the notebook I use to write to-do lists, make notes, and jot down interview questions? That’s got to be almost two years old.
It’s funny how these common, everyday objects that I hardly give a second thought to actually see me through so much of my life and its milestones. If they could talk, what stories would they tell? Odd as it may be, I was quite struck by how easily they brought me back to the time when I first got them, which of course opened the door for me to reminisce and think about the months/years that have passed since.
There’s more to my iPhone story. I got my SIM card cut so I could use it with the iPhone 4. I showed the guy at the telco center my old phone. It was still quite dead. I got everything done and settled into my new (old) device – the home button was a bit dodgy but the guy taught me a way around that.
I got home. Out of curiosity, I tried to turn on my old phone. And it worked! I thought, this isn’t going to last. It’ll fizzle out just like it did last night. But it didn’t! It freaking worked – and stayed fine! And of course I couldn’t go back to using it because I’d already cut up my SIM card. Seriously?
That evening, when the phone still worked fine, I got the “bright” (read: stupid) idea of fixing up my micro SIM so it would work in the 3Gs. Blame it on too many DIY videos. Long story short, it got stuck in the SIM tray of the 3Gs and my dad-in-law had to help me take the phone apart and rescue it.
Somewhere between suctioning the phone apart and trying to free the stuck SIM tray, I resolved never to be a gadget smarty-pants again. Besides, right after my dad-in-law finally removed the SIM card, the 3Gs went blank again and it’s been blank ever since. Of course it would do that.
