oh, Sanyo! Ciao Ciao

Oh, my little Sanyo cell phone with the lousy low-res built-in camera, how I’ve loved you. You have your little quick Web button that I could push so easily and connect to my site from anywhere. Never mind that your buttons were too small to write anything of note, I loved you. I loved that you came with Mobi TV and that I could watch CNN from the Oyster Bar at the Copley Plaza. I loved that my mother was so impressed by you. I love that you took over eight hundred pictures for me and of me and of friends and places I went and uploaded each one, lovingly and allowed me to change them and edit them with all of your cool and groovy features.

You had that folded grace that only flip cell phones can have. Those hard, upright phones will never know the bend-in-half grace of a flipper like you, the way you fold, silver toned, like a ballerina stretching before the show. The way I could just casually flip you open and almost say, “Moulder, it’s me…” and pretend I was Scully on the X Files. So cool. Only you allowed me this and I will never forget the times we have had together, sending naughty text messages to my husband, sending pretty photographs to Mummy, sending instant messages through MSN Messenger to my work friends because only you allowed MSN. You were the first – You and Sprint had made my life so much easier. You even had a speaker button, so it was as if you were speaking to me. I remember dialing in audioblogs and hearing the prompts through your speaker before I read my last poem, How to Peel an Apple – the very last poem I would ever blog through you. How it brings tears to my eyes that never again will we share a poem between us.

All because the other day, while I was working on an article and sitting on the bed with my laptop, my twenty-pound tortoiseshell cat stepped on your beautiful, full-color screen and when I looked to you to upload some new photographs I had just taken, the screen was cracked into a thousand shards and the buttons had all gone dead. You made no sound when I pushed your “go” button. NO beep. Just silence. And your face – all cracked like that. You looked so sad, but you were gone. There was no saving you, though I tried. I shut you off, on, off on, off, on, off, on, I even took out your battery and blew on it as if by some magic I could bring you back to life, but alas, no. You had gone. Left the building. Little Sanyo, you had died and I was alone.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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