GUEST POST: I Wanna Take My iPhone Behind the Middle School and Make It Pregnant*

As I've noted, Tuesdays are the day when my wonderful blogging friends use this space to let loose.  There are no rules, not even that one rule about not talking about Fight Club.


Do you know my lovely, ever fabulous, super soul sister Lori Dyan? Oh, sweet holy hell, this woman is someone you need to go read RIGHT NOW.  Particularly since she is setting up a compound for us to live in, so you should want to meet my guru. Or hostage taker.  Whatever.

Her adventures with her husband, The Serb, are fucking hilarious - from the joys of all-inclusive resorts to wedding extravaganzas.  Read about her distaste for camping and her inability to avoid peer pressure.  And finally, her excellent advice on how to write and how not to write a book in five days.   

And follow her on Twitter, where she is wicked awesome.  

But first, this:

****************

I Wanna Take My iPhone Behind the Middle School and Make It Pregnant*

Two years ago I carried around a cell phone that was the size of a Kleenex box and I didn’t know what LOL even meant. Now I won’t leave home without my iPhone. I’ve often left one of my kids behind at the store, but never my beloved iPhone. It’s not for the texting, Skyping or Angry Birds that make me love it so—it’s the handy GPS that saves my bacon on a daily basis.

My sense of direction sucks like a starlet on a casting couch. I’ve been this way my entire life—my husband jokes that we only eloped so that I wouldn’t have to find my way down an aisle. The iPhone has changed everything.

I’m still the worst with directions, but the iPhone helps me hide it.

Anyone who sees me on my morning run walk would think I’m using my iPhone to listen to music, but the fact is I need it to find my way around my neighbourhood. Where I’ve lived for eight years.

Ironically, I become like Magellan in a mall, instinctively knowing where to find all bathrooms, food courts and Old Navys. Once I step outside the mall, however, my inner lemming lets loose and I just follow others around, aimlessly hoping I’ll stumble across my car.

(There's also a strong possibility that I'll require the assistance of mall security and their minivan to help me find my car after I've spent 45 minutes searching frantically for it while lugging around my underdressed newborn in a blizzard.)

(Shut up.)

Last week I ventured out of the gentle confines of the suburbs to brave the concrete jungle of Toronto for a doctor’s appointment. You’d think I could remember my way around, having worked and lived there for years. You would be wrong.

I used most of my iPhone’s features on this trip and I still barely made it home. Parking in an underground garage, I took the proactive (and very lame) step of photographing the address to help me get back there after my appointment. Then I noted the parking level in an email to myself. 

Unfortunately, that didn’t help me find the building with the stupid appointment. Even with my GPS, I wandered a five block radius for twenty minutes. Someone finally asked if I needed help and pointed out that my destination was across the street from the parking garage. 

Following my appointment (FYI, all is well—just a dodgey mole removed—wear sunscreen!), I swaggered across the street to my parking garage building, confident of my car’s whereabouts. Ten minutes later I was a sweaty, irrational mess, certain that my car had been stolen. I ran into a security guard and explained my situation, even showing him the picture on my phone. He pointed across the other street.

Apparently, I couldn’t get my bearings that afternoon because I’d lost them. Along with my dignity. But I’m confident that Steve Jobs is working on an app for that.

*Special 30 Rock shout out for Suniverse because we both worship at the altar of Tina Fey [EDITOR: I want to take Lori Dyan behind the middle school and get her pregnant.  Alas, I cannot.]