Printed in The Daily Item on Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Sep·a·ra·tion anx·i·ety: Apprehension or fear associated with removal from home or from a significant other to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment.
Aside from an incident following a messy handoff on the first day of school from my grandmother to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Wahn, I can’t recall ever experiencing a major episode of separation anxiety – until last Tuesday.
The day started out like most other days. The alarm on my iPhone went off at 5 a.m. Before I even crawled out of bed, I checked my email, scanned the day’s news headlines, glanced at my Facebook feed, liked two Instagram pics, played three moves of Words With Friends, responded to a text message, and paid my electric bill. After wasting about 30 minutes, I got out of bed with my phone still in hand and got dressed for my morning run. I plugged headphones into the phone, turned on some music and set the app to track the distance and pace of my run. I got back to the house, showered and dressed, and ate breakfast (logging each bite of food into my calorie tracking app) while reading the mobile versions of the local newspapers. I headed out the door for work by 8:30.
As soon as I turned onto Lynnfield Street I realized that something was amiss. The Bluetooth device in my car was searching for a signal to connect with my iPhone -- which could only mean one thing: I left the phone at home.
While I was only a few blocks from my house, I couldn’t turn back. I had a meeting in the office at 9 and couldn’t risk being late.
Then panic began set in. What if I got caught in Wyoma Square traffic? How would I let anyone know I was running behind schedule? I couldn’t call. Couldn’t text. Do payphones still exist? And if they do, would I dare put one in the vicinity of my mouth/face? Plus, if I stopped, it would make me even later.
I took a few deep breaths. After getting through Wyoma with no issue I had time to stop for a coffee. If I was going to make it through the day without my phone, I was going to need at least a medium … except that I usually pay for my order with the app on my phone that was sitting somewhere in my house.
With no coffee or phone in hand, I got to the office with a few minutes to spare before the meeting started. Strangely, no one was waiting in the conference room. Did I have the day wrong? I wanted to check my schedule, but since it was on my phone …
After logging onto my computer, I was able to confirm that I was, in fact, a day early for the meeting. I should have known when I didn’t receive an alert 15 minutes prior to its start. But then again, it would have come via my phone.
I was in my office with a landline phone and a laptop computer. Most of the people I needed to be in touch with were within shouting distance, but still I was overwhelmed with a sense of uneasiness and struggling with an unpleasant amount of inner turmoil. Could it be possible that I am so attached to and reliant upon my phone that I was suffering from separation anxiety after only a few short hours apart from it?
I suppose it isn’t all that unfathomable. I bought my first mobile phone, a bulky gray Motorola MicroTAC, in 1995. It was more of a luxury than a necessity, but it was purchased with the intent that it would only be used in case of emergency. I unfortunately learned a very expensive lesson as to why I shouldn’t have turned it on or made any non-emergency calls. My first bill was a $500+ reminder from CellularOne about roaming charges, overages on minutes and other miscellaneous taxes and fees. That was one expensive call to Domino’s Pizza.
As technology improved, my mobile phone got smaller, as did the monthly bill, but my attachment to the device grew exponentially. The phone had gone from a security measure that was stashed in my glove compartment for long drives home from college to essentially becoming my “significant other.”
Looking back over the last 15 years, I can’t remember a vacation, birthday party, wedding, or even a funeral that I didn’t have my phone with/on me. And -- this is sad, but true -- it even comes to bed with me every night with the ringer on right next to my sleeping head. It’s replaced my need for an address book, calendar, Walkman, camera, in many ways a computer, and since the invention of the text message has ironically replaced a need to actually speak to most people.
Which brings me back to my panic-stricken day without it. While I was hyper-connected in every other sense with the gadgets and devices in my office, by noontime Tuesday I was actually pining for my phone. I was finding it hard to concentrate because I was so concerned about what information and access I lacked without the phone in my pocket or nearby. What if I needed to call someone? I haven’t memorized a phone number in at least a decade. I’ve just stored them in my contacts and searched by name anytime I’ve needed to make a call. What if someone wanted to reach me? Would they even know how to? There was no way I was going to survive a full day under this duress.
An afternoon errand took me back to the Wyoma Square area, so I used it as an opportunity to swing by my house to recoup the phone and, more importantly, recoup my sanity. It was exactly 1:37 p.m. when I was reunited with my phone and reconnected with the world. Apparently I wasn’t the only one suffering from separation anxiety due to the inability to instantly connect. While I was without my phone, I missed eight text messages and had an abundance of social media messages awaiting my response. All expressed concern about my whereabouts and well-being because I had been off the grid for five hours. People knew something was amiss, but they certainly weren’t calling. That takes too long.
While I am poking fun at the anxiety and chaos generated by a few-hour separation from my beloved iPhone, I can’t help but think how all of this effortless connectivity has negatively impacted the way we live. We expect to be able to reach everyone immediately, to get responses at the touch of a button, and to communicate without ever speaking. And when we can’t, we often lose more than just our connection – we also sometimes lose the ability to cope. If only there were an app for that.
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