Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

I spent over three hours in the cell phone store on Saturday. It makes me crazy every time I walk into the place. Of course I’m overjoyed at the fact that I’ve finally met the criteria to upgrade the broken phone I’ve been hobbling along for the last four months, but honestly every time I walk into the place I end up wondering if I’ve gotten the phone that I want, or the one they are pushing on special that day.

As a Dad, I truly love my daughters, but as any Dad with daughters knows when they flash that little smile at you there is no way you’re going to win. As you can guess when the oldest asked to upgrade from the Android to the iphone I did what any self-respecting father would do and did my best Napoleon at Waterloo and withdrew from the battle zone and agreed to the change.

So as I’m sitting in the phone store I was thinking to myself that I was ready for this. I had done my homework and knew how many “points” I had to spend which meant a new phone for me, and iphone for the princess and enough left over points to wave both activation fees. Yes, I was ready and wasn’t taking no for an answer. And then it happened….as we sat in front of the customer representative and explained what I had written all out in paper, suddenly he started throwing out new plans and explained to me how surprised he was that I was on such an expensive plan when they have had much cheaper solutions for me. Really? I’ve been a customer of this company nearly twenty years and this seems to be a common story for them. Lock you into this “great plan” and then a few months later come up with a new plan but neglects to tell the customer unless you call in to complain about it.

Needless to say before the end of our adventure we walked out with exactly what she wanted and a phone for me that I still am not sure how to run, but I did get one of those fancy ear phone things which will make my boss happy since I can drive and talk at the same time!

As I sent my smiling daughter off into the world, I took a few minutes to stop in a local food joint to grab a bite, and as I sat there by myself I looked around. Do you know what I saw? People on phones, everywhere…people on phones. I made a mental note and went to visit some friends and as we sat there chatting I started to notice it….phone creep. First we start checking to see what time it is, then suddenly we check to see if we have missed a text and the next thing you know conversation has stopped an we’re all sitting there thumbing through facebook. What has happened to us? Is it no longer possible to have a conversation with anyone without having our phones out every single second? Have we become so into ourselves that our phones hold some sort of power over our time?
Oh sure, I’m just as guilty as the next person when it comes to time spent on my phone, and as much as it pains me, there has been more than one meal with friends when I’ve become involved in what was going on in that little screen rather than the world around me. So maybe you and I just need to take a breather for a moment and set the phones down. Engage the people around you and learn to communicate with our mouths rather than our thumbs. Perhaps if we all took a few moments every day to do that we would be a lot better off in the long run. Sorry, but I gotta run, time to check my phone to see if Jenn texted me back yet. See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.