My Dear Darling Precious Smart Phone,
Thank you.
Thank you for letting me Google “original native settlers of England” while riding in the car on the way to Fourth of July fireworks. The question arose while my husband and I were trying to decide the native language of Scotland. A conversation launched by our recent trip to the movie theater to view Disney’s Brave with our children.
The answers: The early inhabitants of England were Britons, and the native language of Scotland is Scottish Gaelic. (I get points for guessing that it was some form of Gaelic.) I know this is correct because everything on Wikipedia is true and accurate, as is everything else on the internet.
You see, Beloved Smart Phone, without instant access to the your vast knowledge of the history of The Land of Angles, pondering these questions all evening would have distracted us from enjoying the Fireworks display. A show celebrating our freedom from the very peoples to whom these questions relate.
That wasn’t the first time you came through for me.
Remember when I got off the highway to take the back roads home so my three-year-old could sleep longer, and I found myself making endless right-only and left-only turns on unpaved, uninhabited roads somewhere in the middle of a cornfield? There wasn’t a three, two or even one G signal anywhere in sight, but your satellite enabled GPS eventually lead me back to pavement and civilization. Were it not for you my children and I might have run out of gas and perished in an abandoned roadside barn in the wilds of Michigan.
I would be lost without you.
Or how about the time you prevented my seven-year-old from having a meltdown and disturbing the seriously ill and injured patients in the ER while waiting for the doctor to treat my three-year-old’s sprained knee? That rousing game of Angry Birds was a clever distraction, followed by pirated episodes of Phineas and Ferb on YouTube. I feared you might be smashed to bits at any second, but you, Brave One, soldiered on, giving everything you had until your battery drained.
Next time I’ll be more thoughtful and bring your charger.
You are the one who makes sitting in construction traffic less painful because I can update my Facebook status while I wait for the flag man. You are the one who notifies me the second I get an email from my Nigerian cousin telling me of the million dollar inheritance that’s mine if I just send my social security, driver’s license and bank account numbers. You are the one who lets me record the minutiae of my life on Instagram and annoy the world with it.
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How did I live without you for 35 years?
I was so disconnected.
These last two years with you have been amazing.
I may upgrade you, but I’ll never let your contract run out.
Love,
Me