Attached at the Hip: My BlackBerry and Me
by The PocketBerry TeamMy BlackBerry is wrecking my life.
Or my sanity, anyway. Perhaps just my concentration. Look at this chopped syntax. I can’t even write this column without thinking about groping the infernal machine to check my e-mail, voice mail, text messages, Facebook, MySpace.
It could be worse. I could be Barack Obama. Our new prez is a Berry buff. Now, apparently, he has to limit his use of it because of rules on official correspondence and record-keeping and such. At least he can still use the phone part of it, right? Barack! Dude! Call me; I have some ideas on this economic debacle thang.
I’m a latecomer to BlackBerry Nation. Till last fall, all I had was a cell phone. My e-mail lived on my desktop computers at home and work, and laptop when I chose to travel with it. I had freedom. I was a real person. I could sit through a movie.
It’s the Movie Incident I regret most these days. My brother and I went to see the remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” — a bad decision, in retrospect. We should’ve listened to my colleague Robert W. Butler. At any rate, we were in the theater and the movie had not started, but the lights had gone dark and the previews had come up and … my BlackBerry vibrated.
It was in my coat pocket. At least I had it on “vibrate.” Let me tell you about the movie barbarians who … no. Focus. So I pulled it out and pressed the button to access my messages — and what was on there that I just had to see? Some drivel about a sale at Guitar Center. Actually, I do need some new picks, so … no. Focus.
My brother looked at me. He didn’t glare. He gazed upon me with pity. Yet I was mortified. There I was in the darkness, with that little narcissistic screen creating its shameful glow. I turned it off.
OFF.
It hurt to do it.
Yet the BlackBerry has its charms. I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment recently. The BlackBerry chirped. This time it was a voice mail from someone at The Star. Confusion had arisen about something I’d written, and deadline was approaching. I called in. I solved the problem. A major journalism crisis was averted.
I’ve also been able to take the BlackBerry on short vacations while leaving my laptop at home. Three-day weekends? The BlackBerry is perfect, just enough connection with the world back home while still fitting into a pocket.
For longer trips, I’ll have to take the laptop if I want to stay wired. Dismissing for a moment the fallacy of our always needing to stay wired, I will take the laptop for one reason:
So I can trim my thumbnails.
And here we get to the core of what having a BlackBerry means for me: longer thumbnails, shorter attention span.
The BlackBerry has a QWERT keyboard, or a reasonable approximation thereof. The keys are so small, and my fingers and thumbs so large, that I have gotten into the habit of letting my thumbnails grow out, the better to navigate.
My thumbnails are big anyway. Now that the nails are BlackBerry-big, I feel like that hitchhiker girl in Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Except I’m not sticking out one of my big ole thumbs trying to flag a ride on the highway; I’m trying to see if I have any new “friend requests” on Facebook.
Going on an extended vacation and having to deal with that wimpy keyboard the whole time just isn’t going to cut it. Now: Let me tell you about all the things I hate about my laptop. No … focus …
To reach John Mark Eberhart, send e-mail to jeberhart@ kcstar.com. He’ll reply … from his Blackberry.
Source: KansasCity.com
