October 1, 2023 | Story By Heather Bushman | Illustration by Delia Sauer
When the black box tumbled off my backpack and onto the concrete below, I didn’t think much of it.
In all its time secured in my jeans or settled on the nearest surface, it never occurred to me that the thing had an expiration date. To me, it was like a sturdy Nokia brick or an elderly, decrepit cat that somehow kept trucking, clinging to life despite all medical odds: indestructible, everlasting, inevitable. It had already taken some considerable hits and sustained little damage, so I figured this latest fall wouldn’t be any different.
But when I picked it up and brushed it off, I realized how wrong I was. The object, I learned, caught the corners on the sidewalk at just the right angle, bringing me face-to-face with scratched edges and spiderwebbed glass.
Screen cracked, battery drained and about seven software updates behind, it was easy to tell the end was near for my iPhone 6s for a while, but that fatal fall was the nail in the coffin. I could practically hear the swirling video game music as I picked it up and assessed the damage. The once-immortal device had used its last life.
This phone I’d kept since my sophomore year of high school, and thus one of the last remnants of my old life. Confined within a little less than six inches of height was the bulk of my adolescence. It held photos from my high school days, sacred conversations with friends-turned-strangers and an interface I’d used since I was 16.
Logistically, replacing it wouldn’t be a real problem. Six years with the beloved clunker primed me for an upgrade at a reasonable price with no change to my current plan. All that stood between me and a clean slate was the hour I’d have to spend in the store making niceties with a bored sales attendant while we both waited for the password to clear or the data to transfer or whatever other red tape we needed to cut. It was a small sacrifice for a phone capable of running the latest version of Slack and displaying my Spotify Wrapped.
Still, that was an ordeal I wished to avoid, one I’d griped about to family and friends who insisted I bite the bullet and make the switch before my old model gave out for good. The inconvenience of it all was one of the many reasons I’d listed to delay the inevitable, along with a general disdain for technology that changed too fast and a reluctance to give up my treasured headphone jack.
Valid as those objections were (especially regarding the headphone jack), I was playing up the hesitancy. I dreaded the ins and outs of getting a new phone, but the mental blocks were what really gave me pause.
Change — contrary to how more well-adjusted 20-something-year-olds regard it — is not my friend. I’ve spent my entire life trying to dodge it, and when it did creep up, I didn’t take it well.
Aside from my four years in college, I’ve lived in the same house since I was 4, and any talk of selling it sends me into levels of distress embarrassing for a 22-year-old to admit. I cried when my dad transferred my childhood basketball hoop from one side of my driveway to the other, and the imprint from years of evading the elements still makes me watery-eyed. I’ve never cut my hair shorter than shoulder-length, and even a brush with a shorter style during my senior year of high school made me want to hide until it grew back out again.
Through it all, my cell phone remained a constant presence. Change forced me to adjust to circumstances I may have not been entirely ready to face, but I had a trusty device that wouldn’t betray me with unexpected differences (mostly because it couldn’t; software updates stopped being possible well before I graduated high school).
I figured it was a fair trade: Life may have ripped me from the familiar, relocated me to the foreign and rendered me helpless as my most meaningful relationships dissolved into nothing, but at least I didn’t have to waste $10 on a dongle.
Mark Twain said it best: Denial is a river in Egypt. And it was one I was all too happy to swim in.
Truthfully, I was running out of time, a feeling I’d quickly come to identify throughout the entirety of my transition to young adulthood. Time ran out and took me with it over and over again.
My phone, despite its myth of immortality, was no exception.
The fatal fall signaled I needed to suck up my reservations and trade the tried-and-true soldier in for a more viable counterpart. So that’s what I did.
It took me until the cusp of college graduation, but I finally trudged to the nearest Verizon store and subjected myself to the arduous process of replacement, niceties with the salesperson and all. Now I’m the proud owner of an iPhone 12, and to my own indulgence, I’m happy to report it has much of the same features of its prized predecessor — just with a battery that lasts the better portion of a day and a screen I can actually see.
But I still bite back irritation every time I have to piece together my headphones with the dongle, which has made a habit of hiding from me in the crevices of my car seats or the corners of my backpack pockets. Man, do I miss that headphone jack.