Garoo

You can’t quite realize from a photograph. It looks bigger. Well, not exactly, but you just can’t judge of the size. You’re used to what you’ve got, and you think everyone’s must be roughly the same size. (Oh how original I am today. Shouldn’t there be some kind of law against pretending you’re talking about sex and then revealing the real subject at the end? It’s been so used and abused…) I met two boys in two days, and both of theirs were so small. So tiny they were ridiculous, compared to mine. (Ok, I said it was lame, why am I going on with it?) Except that, since I’m talking portable phones here, I’m the one who looks ridiculous. No wonder: the last time I bought a phone must have been three years ago, and I went for a cheap (but cute, at the time) one. And now I find out that, in three years, phones have become so tiny—even the cheap ones. When I looked at their pictures on the web, I thought they were cute, that the buttons were well designed, the shape was elegant, and having color displays and wallpapers was cool; but I didn’t think about size. When I saw them on display, among their kin, all more or less of the same size, I didn’t quite realize either. And yet, now, telcos are offering cute miniature phones to their long-time customers for as low as one euro. And I’m here with my Nokia 6110, which was very good at the time, but has gotten somewhat old in, what, five years? Eek. (For those who weren’t there: in the meantime, I’ve had a 3210, but the battery died from years of being plugged in to the charger 24/7 because I never ever left my room, so I digged back for my old 6110, which was a better phone, and not bigger anyway.) I, too, want a phone as small as a lighter. A little Samsung, for instance, with its mini-screen on the lid, so cute. I, too, want to buy it for one euro from my telco. Except that they won’t ever offer me that. Because they don’t like me. They hate me. It’s unfair. I want to be loved. But my contract gives me free communication on nights and weekend, and they profoundly hate those of us who subscribed to that one. (Why did they offer that anyway? Well, everybody makes mistakes, I guess.) And yet, for the couple of years I’ve had that, I never really used it. I’m an autist, I don’t really enjoy speaking on the phone, and I don’t spend my life chatting. Well, I do, but just no orally. So I’m only keeping that subscription in the case I would, someday, maybe, ever, have someone in my life that I’d want to spend my nights calling on the phone. (And I’m pretty sure I’ll be lucky enough to be have my phone line terminated right at that time—either by the telco’s decision, or my bank’s.) And do you think they’d be grateful to me for paying them every month for something I don’t use? Do you think? Nah, they probably don’t even have that option in their database. And I’m stuck with my old 6110.