Forgetting your cell phone is the new naked

Remember that feeling back in the day when you would leave the house and forget to strap on your wristwatch?

We always described it as feeling kind of naked. I have figured out that leaving your house without your cell phone is the new naked.

As I write this, my cell phone is 25 miles away sitting on my kitchen table. I know this because I have been fumbling around for it all day. Even though I have lived most of my life in the days before cell phones, I find it troubling how lost I am without it.

I use it to play instrumental music – mostly movie soundtracks – while I’m working. It’s eerily quiet here without it. Today I’m not getting texts from my wife. I’m also not getting them from my kids, but they never text me anyway, so that’s beside the point. On the other hand, I’m not putting up with all those pesky phone calls from the nefarious Spam Risk.

Thinking of that naked feeling, I once saw a post on Facebook that said you always feel more naked wearing only shoes than you do when you’re completely naked. Naturally, I read that while scrolling through Facebook on my cell phone. And no, I was not naked at the time. At least I hope I wasn’t naked because I was at the office when I read that. I guess I could have been in the restroom, in which case I would have been partly naked, but I digress.

This isn’t a column about nakedness or nudity, but about being forgetful. My forgetter works really well. I’ve become very dependent on my cell phone for keeping my calendar and giving me reminders of upcoming events and appointments. If I had an appointment with you last Thursday and missed it, you now know why.

My wife gets upset with me because I tend to forget things the minute she tells me. That doesn’t stop her from telling me things. Sometimes they’re important and sometimes they’re not, but when it comes to my wife, it’s all important. I know my forgetfulness is a bone of contention with her because she doesn’t let me forget it.

I feel bad about being so forgetful, but I can’t help it. I live in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation and the mental fog that goes with it.

Sometimes I think Sandy feels I have a selective memory. While I may not remember why I walked into a room or what I was just saying, I can sing along with a song I haven’t heard in 40 years and quote lines from movies nearly just as old.

Sometimes I fear I may be getting some form of dementia or perhaps it’s just that I’m getting old. I don’t think of myself as old. I don’t have to. My kids do it for me. They take great joy in reminding me that, um, well, shoot – I forgot what they remind me about. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with dinosaurs, the Garden of Eden, or putting on my pants before I go outside. Funny that none of them reminded me to grab my cell phone. Knowing them, they’ll text me a reminder – if they bother to text at all.

Thinking of cell phones, I wonder how long we will continue to call those contraptions phones. The calling feature is but one of many things they do and it’s no longer the primary function of the device. I guess it’s one of those names that sticks, like calling music recordings “records,” even though they’re no longer printed on vinyl discs.

Just like phones have multiple functions, so do watches these days. Mine can tell me how many steps I’ve taken, my pulse, and even tells time. Sandy has one of those that delivers her text messages, at least as long as she is close enough to her phone for Bluetooth to connect. My watch is supposedly capable to doing that, but I don’t use that function because the text is so small I can’t read it without my glasses. And guess what else I’m always forgetting?

All this makes me wonder what human beings did in the days before cell phones, watches, and glasses. Did they have similar memory problems back then? Obviously they didn’t have nearly as many things to try and remember as modern folks do. At least that’s what my kids tell me because they think I’m that old.

I imagine that the worst thing our ancestors had to worry about was forgetting to put their pants on before going outside. Man, talk about a naked feeling – not that I would know from experience or anything like that.

Joe Southern is the managing editor of the Wharton Journal-Spectator and the East Bernard Express. He can be reached at news@journal-spectator.com.