A Partridge in a Pear Tree...

Drug dealers and iPhone suppliers know their market. The weak addictions of their clients are their bread and butter. I always thought it happens to someone else, but then it snuck up on me too.

My own daughters got me hooked. “Dad, you have to get rid of that dinosaur of a flip phone. Here’s a new iPhone we got you. You can text us and Facetime whenever you want!” You’ll love it, they said. Devious as hell. Even though I was supposed to be grateful, I was skeptical, but they pushed me to give it one little try. I figured it couldn’t hurt. That’s how it starts. A toe in the water. It seems innocent enough, like when the big tobacco companies started supplying GI’s with free cigarettes during WWII. Such good guys to take care of the troops, we thought. They knew they were creating addicted clients for life. Just like Ruth & Hannah giving me that “free” phone. Those bitches.
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Pretty soon you’re tying off and shooting up 24-7 iPhone.

It's been several years now. I don’t even try to break free anymore, no attempt to get clean. The addiction is too deep. My iPhone lies next to me in bed at night, coming between my wife and me and my little dog too. It rides along in my pocket when I walk the dogs and sits on a little shelf next to the commode when I shower or shave. Three years and that damn phone and I have never been more than a few feet apart the whole time.

This addiction has also come between my TV and myself, and the laptop too. It takes over everything, singing a Siren's song, taunting me to come get another fix, like a lab rat hitting a cocaine lever.

I know there’s fresh air and sunshine out there, I’ve seen it on my Weather Channel app. Pandora lulls me into complacency with my favorite tunes. YouTube runs video of Judge Judy screaming at people and calling them names when I’m on my elliptical machine. It’s important for me to see that stuff. 

Now my addiction is in a full blown raging mode and insists that I regularly check Facebook for status updates of people I haven’t seen since high school or perhaps never even met at all.

I bank online, paying my bills with that phone, daring myself to break free and actually drive to the bank just to see that it’s still there, but no, I convince myself that a dark corner, is all I need.

Why go to see a movie when movies come to me?

I can go anywhere and do anything without actually having to go anywhere or do anything, other than move my fingers ever so slightly.

There was a time, I think about it occasionally, when I lived an active life. Get this…I used to talk to people. I mean talk to them directly, with my voice, in front of each other, looking at them. Damn! That shit was cool!

Now the Apple Cartel has me hooked, dependent, enslaved, willing to do almost anything to feed the monster. Fortunately, I downloaded an app that walks me through exercises to calm me down when I get too upset about it.

I’ve got five ways to text, four to get news, three map apps, two built in cameras, and a Googled picture of a Partridge in a Pear tree.

And that’s all I need…