Last night, while otherwise preoccupied with Vh1's "Rock Honors" gala (as a die-hard Kiss fan, it's my sad duty to suffer through these torturous spectacles), I thoughtlessly emptied the contents of my pockets out onto the coffee table. This included: my keychain (with handy AC/DC bottle opener), my battered cellphone, my not-entirely-cheap new iPod, a nifty digital camera that I've dropped more times than I should have, my underfed wallet, my long-suffering sunglasses, a Metrocard and an unwieldy heap of small change. As I watched the charismaless mooks in Godsmack wheeze through a lamentable cover of Judas Priest's "Hell Bent For Leather," I failed to consider that I was leaving this array of my precious, worldly belongings on a surface which is easily accessed by the busy little digits of my two year old daughter. After I wearily watched my corpulent former heroes in Kiss (well, two of them, flanked by a couple of grease-painted flunkies) make all Hindenburg with the stage, I retired for the evening.
As I should've predicted, when the piercing light of morning arrived with typical merciless stealth, little Charlotte bounced out of her room and immediately started using my cellphone as a bludgeoning tool with one hand as she busily rifled through my wallet with the other (I have the sneaking suspicion that this latter practice will continue well into her teens). Fortunately, my wife intervened before Charlotte could start using my house keys as a crude tool with which pry open my iPod. Peggy scooped up my pile of gadgets and crap and placed them up in a disheveled pile out of harm's way, leaving Charlotte to seek out other items to giddily victimize.
As I pieced back together the strewn items from my wallet and re-attached the front cover to my cellphone, I felt no ire towards my little girl (who, ulimately, was only doing what curious tiny people do, albeit with a bit more of an appetite for destruction than most) but more for myself for actually carrying around all this ridiculous crap. How did we get to a point where we can't function without without having to haul around a utility belt's worth of stuff? Half of this gear I don't even need.
At the start of this past holiday weekend, while waiting for a train, I watched a guy next to me accidentally drop his Blackberry onto the tracks. It sat there, sadly beeping and buzzing with the train due to pull in within mere minutes. The guy started to panic. His girlfriend told him to forget it, but I felt his pain. The thing couldn't have cost him any less than five hundred smackers, and with the long weekend looming, he doubtlessly was relying on it to stay in his work loop. He looked over to me and I couldn't stop myself from offering a hand. "Help me back up, buddy?" he asked. Despite the "don't you freakin' dare" look his girlfriend shot me, I nodded and the guy sprang down onto the tracks to fetch his precious gadget. After I dutifully grabbed his arm to hoist him back up, the dude was safely back on the platform, reunited with both his furious girlfriend and his beloved Blackberry. About thirty seconds later, the train screamed into the station, drowning out the empassioned scolding from the dude's girlfriend. "At least it proves she cares about ya," I offered. She continued to scream at him through the entirety of the journey.
Despite my awareness of the ridiculousness of his actions, I honestly can't say I'd have done anything differently were I him. It's for this reason that I don't ever want a Blackberry (never mind the damage Charlotte would doubtlessly love to inflict on it).
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