I was thirteen years old when I got my first official phone. I had just stepped into my teenage years, a phase where we were 'small adults' and never wanted to feel left out. I had cried over and over for a personal phone but my parents didn't think it necessary to own one at my age. A phone was going to distract me from school and if I wanted to make a call so bad, I could use the house phone.
But this wasn't about calls, it was more of the prestige of waving your phone in a stylish wave in a high school rich kid/mean girl pizzazz manner. Having a cellphone was a mark of dignity and full induction into the teenage life. My parents eventually got me this phone that was the rave of the moment then. Its a CDMA phone that didn't need a Sim card. It came with a particular carrier network called MultiLinks by Telkom. So you're practically stuck with that network carrier since other sims wouldn't work on the phone.
It wasn't what I wanted, my classmates were already using Java phones in different styles, some even had cameras! But half bread they say, is better than none at all. I grew to love my phone and played around the settings when I was bored of the one game in it. It also had a voice recorder I used to record songs playing on the TV so I could listen later on. The best feature was the free weekend texts on the multilinks nertwork. I texted my crush all weekend until I could see him in school the next Monday. I also won a lot of free airtime for this phone on a radio show every Monday morning during school breaks.
This $8 phone turned out to be very durable. It hit the floor one too many times but still survived. It was pretty decent and that became a problem for me. I became bored of it over a year later, it was not only just a call&text phone, it was a laughing stock. Ordinarily, I had no swag, something close to a nerd, coupled with this phone, I reeked of nerdiness. A swagless nerd. I had to save my rep by getting a new phone. I remember my friend selling a used java phone to me for about $10 and I was meant to pay in installments. That didn't work out because I didn't have the money and my parents would have been really mad if they found out I had been hiding an alien phone in the house.
My scheming mind then thought of a beautiful evil. Destroy this phone so my parents would be forced to get a new phone. Such a bright idea. I threw it on the hard floor countless times, flipped it off the table, dipped it in water for hours, still, it survived. I remember crying at the immortal powers of this phone. All my plans were fruitless, I was stuck with it! I gave up and continued using the phone well over two years until it died a natural death. I believed it would rise from the dead if I left it out in the open for too long and so I kept it far far away. I eventually got a new phone afterwards, it still wasn't a Java phone but I could change sims. But that didn't survive long as it was stolen. I ended up with a similar CDMA phone which I used until I graduated high school. That my friends, is how I remained without swag.
the immortal bastard
