One night at work, I pulled my phone out to check it one last time before I returned from break. As I pulled it out of my pocket, I watched it (as if in slow motion) slip out of my hands and fall screen down onto the hard, tiled floor. The sound echoed throughout the store.
I bent down to pick it up and see what damage had been done. The screen wasn’t cracked or chipped at all; I was extremely surprised. I took a deep breath, maybe I hadn’t broken it. However, once I turned my phone on, this is what I saw:
A cracked screen didn’t seem so bad now. Yes, I tried turning it off and on again. It was a futile attempt; I knew deep down it wouldn’t work. I realized that I had broken something inside the phone. I finished my shift at work, and when I got home, I immediately started stressing out. What was I going to do without my phone? It was scary how worried I was about it. It is just a piece of technology, but I had become so dependent on it. I didn’t know what I was going to do without it.
The next day, I went to different stores trying to get it fixed. Eventually they told me they were going to have to send it to Apple for them to fix it. I paid a decent amount of money, and they told me they would call me in about a week when it was fixed. I was upset about having to be without my phone, but I was thankful I wasn’t going to be paying $600 for another one.
After a few days without my phone, I wondered why I was freaking out so much. It’s such a small, simple device that I should have easily been able to live without. I still had my laptop and my old iPod running on a very slow IOS6 system, but it just wasn’t the same. There were simple things that I realized I had always taken for granted– like driving somewhere new–I didn’t have any map application telling me step by step where to go. I didn’t have a high quality camera, and I found myself enjoying the moment instead of thinking about taking a picture of it. I also couldn’t message anyone or check social media if I wasn’t at home or school and connected to Wi-Fi. I realized that I didn’t spend as much time on social media as usual, which was good because I had a lot more time to catch up on homework.
Thankfully, I have my phone back now, and it’s working just fine. I’m happy to have it back and will be going out to get a better case soon. But overall, this was a really good learning experience. Yes, it was stressful, and having it break before finals wasn’t ideal, but I realized that it is not the end of the world. I think we all get so caught up in social media and trying to make sure we don’t miss out on anything that we lose sight of the truly important things in life. We feel that we have to be in touch with everyone at every minute in the day. Sometimes we just need to take a break from our busy lives and just get away from everything for a little while. I realized that sometimes we have to lose something to fully appreciate it.
HC xoxo,
Alyssa Harmon