Cell Phone Disaster

I think most of us are still old enough to remember life without cell phones. I remember phone trees in high school between my friends as we arranged a place and time to meet, and then promised to be there. If one of us didn't make it, we either went on without him, unconcerned, or waited a few extra minutes for him to show up, which he usually did. I remember going to Disney World in middle school with my parents, and them letting me wander off alone for an hour or so as they rested. I promised to be back by a certain time, and I was usually. Can you imagine parents today letting their kid do that without a way to be in constant contact? And to think my parents were pretty protective of me.

Nowadays we can't arrange anything without a cell phone. And I'm guilty of this too. For example, leaving for a frisbee tournament with the Pimpdags. Our driver tells each passenger what time he'll be there to pick them up. It'd make sense to be out there waiting for him right? But no, everyone waits in their room for the car to arrive, at which point the driver calls again to tell him he's arrived, and then waits as the passenger drags his crap down the stairs. If the driver is late by even a minute, straight to the cell phone, "where are you?", in spite of the fact that had the person been outside, he'd probably be able to see the driver coming down the road.

No one makes back up plans any more, "if you can't find me earlier, I'll definitely be at ____ at 11pm". Instead its "call me and I'll tell you where I'm at".

This fact of our technologically enriched lives came back to bite me in the ass a couple weeks ago in Vail. I had recently become single again after 3.5 years and Mar told me she'd show me a good time in Vail Village. She certainly did. We ended up at the main dance club and I had managed to integrate myself as complete stranger into the groups of people of dancing (my loathing of the 'dance party' attempted hook up dynamic is material for another post however). Mar and I ended up separated as she left the club to deal with some boy drama. Apparently there are drawbacks to working to the 4:1 male:female ratio in the Vail valley to your advantage.

The fact we were separated didn't concern me. We were exchanging texts about where we were and potential departure times. But then something really shitty happened. My cell phone died despite having been fully charged that morning. Attempting to maintain a signal in the basement dance club had drained it completely. Now I had no clue what Mar was up to, but I figured she knew where I was and would come get me at some point.

So last call comes around and the partygoers spill out into the streets at 2am. Mar is nowhere to be seen. I'm talking to a girl I met in the club as we walked to a bus station, and I almost ask to borrow her phone, but realize that due to the simplicity of saving contacts on my phone, I only have two phone numbers memorized anymore: my own and my home in Oklahoma. Neither is of much use to me at this moment. Mar is one of my best friends and I have no clue what her number is. In middle school I had the numbers of at least 6-8 friends memorized.

Without any way to contact Mar, I proceeded to wander about Vail village for the next hour. I probably covered at least 2 miles of ground with no sign of her. It was nearing 3am and I was approaching being royally fucked and having very realistic thoughts of curling up next to her car in the parking garage for the night.

Ironically, it was another amazing technological networking tool that saved me that night. At 2:45 I walked into a hotel lobby to warm up and saw a computer with a web browser open. I then realized there was one way I could get Mar's number: the 'My phonebook' application on Facebook. I logged on, found her number, wrote it down, and then successfully begged the front desk person to let me make the long distance call. In the second fortuitous moment of the night, Mar actually answered her phone at 3am. She had been crashing on a friends couch in his condo. We met at her car 15 minutes later and drove the 20 minutes back to her place.

This all makes a decent story, but the thing I took away from it was that I almost had to sleep on the concrete floor of a parking garage in 20 degree weather because my cell phone battery died.

And this whole thing could've been avoided if Mar and I had had this conversation as we entered the club:
Mar: If we end up getting separated, call me, but worst case scenario, lets meet outside the club at last call.
Me: Okay.