The Beginning

It was Christmas morning.

I opened my eyes. We were teenagers now, my brother and I. Gone were the days of running down the staircase at the crack of dawn, our eyes squarely fixed on the abundance of presents placed under the tree. I wonder now how my mother felt when we ripped off the wrapping paper at lightning speed, undoing all of her pristine work.

Now, in 2002, we rose slower. Sauntering down the stairs at a leisurely pace, I took in the joyous scene. Walking over to the light-switch, I commanded the tree to glow with the flick of my finger, causing every ornament and piece of tinsel to come alive.

“HELLO?”, I shouted from downstairs. I may have been a teenager now, but I was still the youngest in the house and thus the most enthusiastic about finding out what Santa brought me that year.

My parents appeared first, tying their robes and rubbing the sleep from their eyes. I called my brother's name a few times before running back upstairs to wake him. We couldn’t start without him, of course.

“Let me grab the camera”, Dad said. He had gotten that thing a few years before and had successfully documented every minute of every holiday since.  

Ring!

Ring!

A smile slowly started to appear on my mother’s face.

RING!

I dove towards the sound. I knew it was for me. I had been begging my parents for a cellphone for the past year. Only one friend had one at the time, but that didn’t deter me from pleading my case.

RING!

Frantic, I shoved my hand under the couch. Within moments, I grasped onto it. 

The bright red Nokia flip phone was beautiful. With as much excitement as I could bear, I opened it.

“Hello?” I could hear Dad’s voice both over the phone and from the kitchen.

“YES!”, I screamed. I had never been so excited for a gift. Not even when I opened my Barbie’s McDonald’s playhouse (a sobering prediction for my love of cheeseburgers to this day).

I cradled the phone in my hand, as if I had just unearthed the most precious artifact known to man. The small black and white screen already had a few numbers entered into the contact list, and I got right to work making sure that every friend’s home phone number was in there. 

That was the moment. The moment when a palm-sized piece of technology captivated me in a way that nothing had before. It wasn’t just a phone. It was freedom.

Freedom from the land line. Freedom from yelling “hang up!” when I was in the middle of a two hour conversation with my best friend, the one I had just spent eight hours at school with. Freedom from interrupting someone’s internet session and hearing that god awful alien-like screeching that always followed with “who picked up the phone?!” being yelled from the family room.

I. Was. Free.

Of course, I can’t blame my parents for my phone addiction. In a move everyone saw coming, I found it impossible to stay within my daytime minutes and allotted amount of sent text messages. They would threaten to take away the phone each month when they saw the bill, but I had learned to become quite persuasive in my promises. To this day they wonder why I never went into law.

Looking back now, I would have had the same reaction if I had had to wait until I was an adult to receive the now outdated piece of technology. My enthusiasm would have been just the same, if not more so, since my yearning for a phone would have had a few more years to build. 

When I close my eyes and picture that moment, the feeling is still electric. It wasn’t so much the phone, which I’m sure fifteen year old’s would now have a good laugh at, it was the opportunity.

The opportunity for connection - to friends, boyfriends, and whatever I wished for. 

Getting that phone was part of growing up, and I count myself lucky that I received it in a time when the only things I could do on it were make phone calls, send text messages, and play a game of snake.

Now, fixed to the five inch screen in front of me, I wonder what life would be like if I only had a tiny red flip phone to reach people by...