Because I watched too many episodes of ER and did not have occasion to buy drugs from anyone at an early, or any, age, when I see someone with a beeper, I assume they are important rather than delinquent.
I realize it is 2018.
But the guy with the pager in class who kept checking his phone mid-class? I figured he was a doctor. When he started eating snacks in half-pigeon I had my doubts, but maybe he’s diabetic and had to stay on top of it?
Everyone has the occasional alarm foul, and I can certainly forgive an emergency, but I am slightly unnerved at how anyone keeps their phone right next to their yoga mat, pretty much ever.
This might have to do with how I started a yoga practice before personal cell phones existed, a fact about which I’m not even exaggerating, but am also possibly 1,004 years old. Or how when I took Ashtanga for a full year they made us take off all jewelry because it restricts the energy flow, so if we’re going to look at energy that carefully, the phone is the first thing to go. I relish the opportunity to turn my phone off, or on silent, or shove it so far down in my bag that it causes a slight panic after class.
I turn my phone off on planes. Not airplane mode - off completely.
I let my phone die if I’m not stranded, don’t need Spotify, or don’t have to incessantly check Google Maps.
I have a hard time keeping my phone on airplane mode overnight because my family all live far away, and if I had to construct some rules for this, I would say I treat my phone like a land line. You can always get a hold of me when I’m at home, it’s there for emergencies, and I screen my calls.
Part of the ease of having so much information readily available is that, were there to be an emergency, and had you mentioned to your loved one(s), “Hey, I’m going to yoga,” that they could then quickly google the studio number, call it, and have someone pull you out of class.
You know, hypothetically in the worst case.
Otherwise, what we are left with is not worst cases, but regular cases of whatever else is happening.
I have a work email that I can’t access very well from my phone, and I only catch up on IG posts once a day, (late at night before bed,) and even still today I spent two hours making playlists, so easily available that by the time I got on the bus I hid my phone from myself. By the time I got to the studio I had spent so much time staring at a screen I couldn’t remember how not to be awkward.
Remember when ER did that live show and it was super uncomfortable? (Me, today.)
Oh, you don’t? You probably don’t have a pager either, what a loser.