My nightmare of showing up to school unprepared for a test has been replaced with one so raw, so real, it scares not just me, but anyone with an iPhone, and might be preventing the other 1 percent from buying one.
I enter a stark, white, room. The noise of the door slamming shut causes me to glance instinctively down. Battery is at 16 percent. Panic sends my eyes darting around the bottoms of the walls, searching for that fix. Like a horny, desperate old man, I have the prongs out and ready to jab in any random socket. But there are no outlets. I freak out, trying to calculate how long it, and I, have to live.
I used to stop by my house to re-charge my body's batteries before going out again. Now I make a pit stop to re-charge my electronic batteries. Gone are the simple days when getting ready for a date meant taking a whore's bath and slipping a condom in my wallet. If I don't walk out of the house with a phone at 100 percent, I am not 100 percent and therefore unprepared.
I might not be very bright, but I know to dim my screen and not do anything unsafe like upload pics. If I see two people on a date and on their phones, sure I am witnessing either a first date, or a last, but I am also watching amateurish fools. I ask the hostess for a good view but mean one near a wall outlet so I can surreptitiously plug-in. If my date judges me then it was not meant to be. If they join me, violin music swells at the same volume that my battery percentage goes up.
A date allows us to imagine the possibilities -- both long- and short-term. The hopefully end resulting sex helps determine if we're a suitably thrilling match. I wish the bump and grind motions could satisfy my carnal desires and also charge my phone. I'd work harder.
Friction, often so wasted, needs to be harnessed. Some Tokyo train stations run on power gathered from hustling commuters just walking on special flooring. I'd like my phone's battery restored while I walk. If I can pocket dial Paris, I know better charging options are not far behind.
Technology changes super fast. I'm still standing in line for one iPhone when another comes out. I bet there's an app developed to jump start the human heart before a truly useful one that gives us alternative charging sources for our phones.
I wish simple talking or texting would re-charge my device, like reciprocal Twitter followers.
My iPhone's always in my hand, set to vibrate, thrilling me like a blockish, masculine Ben Wa ball. I curse its omnipresent weight, wishing the constant squeezing produced energy instead of the worry that its proximity to my testicles was electrocuting my little swimmers.
I offer my mind as a recharging source; there's plenty of power available since we only use like 10 percent of our brain. Let's be honest -- I'm not clearing my mind during the shavasana period of yoga. I'm wondering where I parked, who "liked" my check-in at the ultra hip Yo-Yo-Yo-Gah, and what percent is left on my dying phone. I wish that ten-minute meditation restored both my phone and me to full capacity.
My nighttime ritual is just like yours -- I floss, brush, lock the doors, turn off the lights, clear my browser history in case I don't survive the night, and plug-in my iPhone. I need an alternative, natural power source to save my life. I fall asleep with the cord running across my bed and into my phone, sometimes coming from my laptop and iPad. If I wet the bed there's a good chance I'll be electrocuted.
If I see that I have 82 percent or higher, I've tried to go renegade and leave it untethered, but I bolt upright in bed an hour later, gasping. I get the phone to a power source with the urgency of returning an escaped, flopping goldfish to water.
I wake up the next morning, even before the iPhone's alarm goes off. Like a nurse checking a patient, I grab the phone's cold sleeping body. Its screen blinks on, sweetly awakening from my familiar touch; it made it through the night.
I roll back over for five minutes more sleep, getting an emotionally eye-opening good look at the untouched pillow and uncrumpled space in the lonely bed next to me before I close my eyes.
Wait, what was my percent?