(Blue yellow green) Yellow white red - silver red green orange

Yesterday I broke down and bought a new cell phone. I figured that since I’ve lived in New York for nearly two years now, I might consider getting a local number. Plus, my current cell phone weighs more than Henry Byrne and keeps giving me messages a day or two after the fact, which is really annoying when you’re trying to have phone sex, much less coordinate real-life sex.

I guess I should cut it some slack, though, because man, the things this phone has seen. This phone was totally In the Shit. When I first got it, my hair was still straight and they weren’t sure yet whether Al Gore or George Bush was going to be president. For nearly five years, my ringtone has been a loud midi version of “Frontier Psychiatrist” by The Avalanches, which makes my roommates shout “That boy needs therapy!” whenever it rings. Every time I put it on the table at the bar, someone inevitably says, “Oh! How cute!”, like I’m trying to bring back grunge or something. It’s outlasted three apartments, one car, and two and a half boyfriends. Whenever I want to—wait, did I already make the handcrank joke here? Oh yeah, like seven months ago. The other night at the bar, Martin was showing me his new phone (the coolest thing about it being that when it rings it plays some song that goes, “Balls in the mouth, balls in the mouth”), and Sarah N. poked me drunkenly and said, “Sarah. Hey Sarah. Say that thing you say about the handcrank.” Even my jokes about my phone are old. I need a new one just so I’ll have some new material.

I’m going to miss the solid, tank-like qualities of my old phone, though. I’m probably going to sound like a dinosaur here, much like the cars and headphones issue, but all I ever use it for is drunk dialing and text messaging, so why do I need it to have GPS or Bluetooth or be covered in mink? The new phone has a camera in it, I guess just in case my actual camera can’t be bothered at the moment, and it’s tiny and silver, which means I can use it as a prop when I ride into a fancy men’s clothing store on my Rascal and say, “It’s Stella. She’s leaving Chloe.” But the best part of the whole thing is that when the girl told me my new phone number, they were totally awesome colors.