Ring my bell. Or don’t.

 

So I have a phone now, which makes this a very exciting and frightening time for me.

On the one hand, I love my phone. Specifically, I love iPhones. I love that my iPhone has a pink case with birds on it. I love that it is filled with magical gnomes who fetch my email and play Scrabble with me.

Mostly, I love that Siri is my little bitch and has to do what I say. I can push her around in three different languages, not including UK English or Aussie English. (UK English doesn’t even count because Siri takes on a masculine voice and never understands my commands, even when I use my best Bridget Jones accent. And Oz Siri sounds like Robot Olivia Newton John, which is terrifying).

I am very attached to my phone. I would have my hands surgically replaced with iPhones if I could. Except then I think it would be really hard to use them.

That said, I hate telephones. They terrify me. I never understood how people could casually say, “Oh, just give me a call!” like it’s the easiest thing in the world. When I have to make a phone call, my palms sweat. I break out in hives. I imagine all the things the person on the other end is doing, and I feel terrible for intruding in their world. It feels so needy, like dropping by someone’s house unannounced, clanging a bell at their head and screaming “Answer me! Answer me!”

I am not even comfortable calling for pizza.

 

Unfortunately, extreme phone phobia is not a great quality in a journalist. I used to make my phone rounds when I was confident the person was unable to answer — dialing his or her office line at 5 a.m., for instance — thus forcing them to return my call, since I’m more comfortable answering the phone than I am initiating. That’s not always a reasonable approach, though, and it sometimes took hours for me to muster up the courage to make just one call. I’m lucky that newspapers have relatively forgiving deadlines.

I don’t know why I can make hundreds of skydives without batting one pretty little eyelash. But put a telephone in front of me, and I crumble.

The past year of travel sans phone was glorious. Yes, an iPhone was part of my gear. But since I no longer had a contract and didn’t jailbreak the phone, I could only use it for wifi, notes and various apps.

Having no phone was remarkably liberating. When people wanted to talk to me, they had to find me. I received handwritten notes slipped under my door. I had messages left at the corner store or at a hostel desk or with baristas. When I made plans to meet friends at the coffee shop at 2 p.m., they actually had to be at the coffee shop at 2 p.m. What a concept! There was none of this business of calling and saying, “Oh, something came up. Can we do this tomorrow?”

When I returned to the U.S., I tried to avoid getting a phone as long as I could. I used Skype sometimes. I borrowed my husband’s phone. I’ve been sending a lot of emails. But having my own cellphone does make things easier, especially when I’m going to school, running my own freelance business and making appointments.

Also, the iPhone 4S wooed me with her luscious curves, thin frame and sexy talk.

 

My phone phobia is gradually getting better, especially since the world has embraced other platforms for communication. I don’t feel forced into phone conversations anymore, since I can easily Facebook, text or tweet people instead. I also don’t have a newsroom full of colleagues sitting nearby, listening in to my interviews, rolling their eyes at my questions, trying to talk to me at the same time. And now that I’m not doing any hardcore journalism, there are very few occasions in which the person on the other end of my call will get all screamy and instruct me to go die.

To help with my recovery, I’ve been stashing away some celebrity phone numbers, and I look forward to having an epic prank call night in the near future. “Is your refrigerator running, Anthony Bourdain? Well, you’d better go catch it!”