I feel like an outcast.

Not the typical social high school outcast that’s made fun of for what they wear and how smart they are – I sit with plenty people at my lunch table, and no one’s ever had a problem with my pink sparkly shoes, or called me a dork.

A technological outcast, is more what I feel like. Yes, I feel secluded because I don’t have a high tech phone that serves as an immediate gateway to social media, an automatic arcade or a texting machine. Instead I’m the [unfortunate] owner of a bright red slide out phone, featuring a microscopic screen and a glitch that shuts my phone off occasionally whenever I delete old texts. What fun.

So, get a new one, they all say. And I’ve thought about it, I have. But what if I do? Crack open my piggy bank, and go to the nearest phone store. I pay, say $300 – the phone becomes my best friend for the next couple months.

That’s when I’ll turn on the TV. And they’ll announce the new version of the phone. The faster, sharper, prettier, cleaner, brighter, better phone. You know, better than the one I spent a good $300 on a mere couple of months ago.

Technology is a constant moving target. It always advances – it just depends on whether or not people are willing run with it. Right now, I’m not doing any running. By walking, though, I do feel like a loner. While everyone “Snapchats” and “Instagrams” all you hear from my corner is click click. I just slide that red phone, out and in, out and in.

Then when I’m with a group of friends, suddenly, it’s not about talking about our days. It’s talking about other peoples’ days. “Did you seen what so and so posted? Can you believe they’re doing that?” It’s like our phones are a disconnecting us, despite the fact that we’re sitting right next to each other.

I wish sometimes we could take a step backwards with technology, instead of taking a giant leap forward. I want to my friends to verbally describe their days to me, instead of showing me a video or picture of it. I want them to whisper secrets in my ear, instead of having it texted to me. How we communicate with each other is changing through the rapid development of new technology. Suddenly letter writing and traditional face-to-face communication is in most cases, forgotten.

But these new, shiny smartphones, they’re too much fun for that to matter. It would be too hard to take that step backward, too hard to put it down. Eventually, everyone will have one. Heck, I’ll probably have one. I’m not giving up though – at least not yet. I??%Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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m still going to walk, chin up, shoulders straight, with that red slide phone.

Click click.