Let me tell you a little about myself.

In August of last year I hastily decided it would be advantageous to go back to school to study production make-up.  By some whim (a very large one) I moved to Orlando FL to do so without having seen the school I found online.  I strongly reccommend not doing this in the future.  Anyway, I left my friends, family, everything I knew and everything I cared about behind in a small suburban town where people are boomarangs.  Yes, they'll leave to prove it can be done. But sooner or later they'll come back and end where they began. 

I lasted five months away from New York.  Were it not for some personal tragedy I would still be in Orlando - but only for my job (I am a hairstylist and proud of it.) The cell phone I have as my first selling item reminds me of the very first of very many unfortunate events in Florida.  I asked for the best phone they had and I got handed that one.  If I'm going to pay over $50 for a phone, it's going to have a camera.  This one didn't so I had to special order it.  While it was being processed, shipped or whatever took two weeks to get it to me, I moved to Florida.  Mmmmhmm.  Across the country in two weeks.  By the time I got it I was already thrust into the working scene and it took me several days to call the store I bought it from so they could activate it and switch my existing cell phone number to this new phone.  (You probably can call any store to do this, but this particular store is operated by one of my dad's close friends - which is why we drive over an hour to update our Verizon account every two years.) After I was able to use it, I discovered I was using my laptop more for the features I had originally bought the phone for. 

I noticed, too, that my cell phone was always losing signal at work where I was spending the majority of my time.  I was missing phone calls, exciting pix of new babies I had missed the birth of, things I couldn't miss.  I brought it to the nearest Verizon store and he told me that it was because the area I had moved into had a very weak Verizon reception.  Perfect.  But, somehow I had associated the phone (not the provider) with this problem and I just wanted to talk to my family! How could I do that if my phone doesn't work?  And why should I have this phone if it doesn't even cheer me up with V-Cast capabilities?  I became a ravenous beast who only wanted a new phone.

I will save you the scary details of what followed but tell you this:  I spent a total of five hours driving to the Verizon corporate office and ended the week with the same phone.  So there I was driving home the final time, sobbing and cursing at the phone sitting in my purse on my passenger seat. It was stuck with me the same way I was stuck with it the same way I was stuck in Florida.  Alone.

This is the true story behind the phone.  It's a metaphor and the last reminder of the five months I spent in hell.