A couple of weeks ago, my student stole my phone right in front of me. I wrote about the experience extensively here, but during the whole process and ordeal, I didn’t have a phone for approximately 24 hours. I quickly learned the extent to which we rely on our phones on a daily basis, or at least the extent to which I rely on my phone.
Fortunately, I still could communicate with a lot of my contacts through iCloud and through my Mac. But I could only get in contact with friends who also communicated through Apple products. Any of my friends that communicated with me through Android were not able to keep in touch with me at the time. When I got a new SIM card into a friend’s old iPhone 6, I saw multiple green texts on my phone that I had overlooked, friends who were looking for rides or asking questions that I completely didn’t see.
I instinctually grab towards my pocket to look at my phone frequently and check notifications. I did that all the time after my phone got stolen only to get reminded that I didn’t have a phone anymore. The response was so conditioned because I’m so used to relying on my phone for so many things, like updates on the news, alarms, music, checking my e-mail, social media, checking the weather, and you name whatever else. I also do a lot of work on my phone, since short e-mails or communicating with parents are a part of my job, I couldn’t do much of that.
Right after school, I had to go to another location and building for training with my teacher program. I would scribble down directions from Google Maps, old fashioned style, and try to memorize the directions to get to my next location. Unfortunately, I took a wrong exit and got lost halfway through my drive, and although I have been an Uber and Lyft driver in Baltimore, I had no idea where I was going. I had to continually stop at street corners to ask people if they knew where my location was. I left about 30 minutes of extra time to get there and I still was late.
It wasn’t until I made a random stop in a laundromat and asked if they could look up directions for me that I knew where I was going. It was the grace and generosity of others that allowed me to make it to the building. I arrived to my…
