What, me smartphone dependent?

Last Thursday, the unthinkable happened. I was separated from my smartphone for 17 hours. Oh, the horror! Oh, the humanity! (Mine.)

For years, I’ve been making fun of those for whom their mobile is another appendage. What’s wrong with someone that they can’t put that infernal device down for even a minute? Who wants it? Who needs it?

But over those years, I’ve become fairly addicted myself.

Oh, I’m still perfectly capable of going out, looking at the person I’m with and carrying on an actual face-to-face conversation without placing my phone on the table where I can glance at it (and pet it). And when I’m volunteering in the kitchen or clothing distribution at St. Francis House, the phone’s in my locker. Four hours phone free! Just imagine…

On the other hand – the hand holding my Galaxy 6 in the black and white polka dot Kate Spade case – when I’m out for a walk, and realize I’ve forgotten my phone, I backtrack and retrieve it. What if I passed out? Or got knocked out by some long-boarder? That phone contains my emergency contacts, thank you. Plus if I feel the need to check my precise Fitbit steppage, or see what Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Hayes, or Lauren Duca is up to on Twitter, I can check right in.

When I’m at PT/the gym, I used to leave my phone in the locker. More recently I started keeping it by my side. Just in case, in the middle of a row, I can check my email or look at Twitter to see what Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Hayes, and Lauren Duca have to say for themselves.

And of course, that smartphone is marvelously handy for looking all sorts of useless things up. Which was what I was doing that resulted in the temporary but quite painful separation from my increasingly precious smartphone.

On Thursday, I was out in Worcester with my cousin Barbara to do our annual family grave visit.

The smartphone had come in handy earlier in the day, when I took pics of the graves of my parents and my sister – the plan being to send them off to whatever outfit I can find that will clean the mold off their gravestones.

Back at Babs’ house, we were sitting around talking and Barbara mentioned a former neighbor who had held a high governmental post. Barbara and her husband aren’t much for using their smartphones for information retrieval, so I of course jumped in and volunteered to sleuth. Having found the info we “needed” on that neighbor, I placed my phone on the table next to where I was sitting, and there it sat while we adjourned for dinner.

When I take off from someplace other than my own home, I generally do an obsessive check to make sure that my phone is in my pocketbook, or in my hand. But for some reason, on Thursday night, as we headed out so that Barbara and Dick could drop me off at the train station, I didn’t. (And, as an aside, I will point out that I did not have any wine with dinner. So I was in full possession of my faculties.)

As the train was pulling out of the station, I did think to check my pocketbook and my backpack. Uh-oh.

Now, if you’ve ever had a Longchamps bag, you’ll recognize that they are completely “open concept”: no multiple compartments, other than a skimpy little patch of material capable of holding a key or a folded panty shield. But not a smartphone.

Similarly, there’s no place to hide in an Anello backpack, which held my gardening gloves and the tools I’d used for grave-tending.

Nevertheless, I persisted in checking and rechecking.

I would have borrowed someone’s phone to call Barbara but, of course, I have no idea what her phone number is.

In fact, the only phone numbers I know by heart are the landlines of my sibs and a couple of friends. (That and the phone numbers of people who are long dead. If I need to call my mother or my Aunt Margaret, or the parents of my high school friends, well, I’m on it.)                         

The first thing I did when I got home – after an I-feel-naked-without-my-phone walk home from the Back Bay Station – was use my landline to call my cellphone. I was hoping against hope that I would hear that reassuring ring, emanating from a heretofore unknown slot in my pocketbook or backpack. Perhaps it had slipped into one of those gardening gloves…

On the other end, I could hear Barbara trying to answer my phone, but it’s tricky.

I went to call her and realized I had no idea what her number – cell or landline – is. If she lived in her old home (which she’d left 13 years ago), I would have known her number. But they’d upped sticks and had a “new” number. I.e., a number from the post cell-phone era. So I called information. For some reason, Barbara and Dick’s landline is unlisted. But the operator hopefully offered the number of their same-name son in Bedford, Mass. So I gave him a ring to get his mother’s numbers.

It almost goes without saying that no one in their house picked up. Who answers when they don’t recognize the number?

I use one of my handful of remembered numbers – a lifeline - and called my sister Trish to get Barbara’s number.

Finally, we connected.

Fortunately, on Friday, Barbara was coming into Bedford, Mass for her book club meeting. She would meet me at 12:30 at the Riverside T-Station to hand me my phone.

I needed to get to PT in the a.m. and wanted to set the clock. When was the last time I used my alarm clock? Years. I use my phone. It took my a mo’ to refigure out how to the alarm clock works.

I also realized that I wanted to know what the time was so that I could make sure I would get out to Riverside on time. When was the last time I used a watch? Years. I use my phone. On Friday morning, I had to find a jewelry store to replace the battery in my long-dormant watch.

Fortunately, I made it out to Riverside with a few minutes to spare. I had thought that I’d be able to use a payphone there if I needed to call Barbara. But, even though this is both the terminus of a rapid transit line and a long-haul bus station, there was no payphone. If I had to call Babs, I would have had to rely on the kindness of a stranger to lend me their phone.

Fortunately, Barbara was right on time. Like a reverse of the wife of Charlie on the MTA, who went down to the Scollay Square Station each day to hand Charlie a sandwich through the open window, Babs slowed down and, through the open window, handed me my phone

Talk about mother-and-child reunion. Although all I had was 3 percent battery juice, I was elated to see my best ol’ buddy, my precious little always-by-my-side friend.

Seriously, how did we live without them?