Yesterday I dropped my cellphone in the toilet. A friend of mine told me that these sorts of things only happen to moms. They must happen to dads, too, because my husband did the same thing a month ago. As I’ve been waiting for its resurrection, I’ve actually loved not having it in my life. It’s one less thing for me to forget when I leave the house. One less thing to charge. One less answering machine to listen to. One less ring to follow and realize it’s not actually the doorbell or the alarm clock or the oven timer. One less object for my son to try to swallow. When I make a plan now, I have to stick to it. I have to be on time since I can’t call from traffic and say I’m stuck. I can’t be called to come home early. But I know that once my cellphone refuses to wake up from its 48 hour dry-out, I’ll have to replace it. Because I am a mom, and I want to be reachable by my babysitter. But I wish cellphones were used just for emergencies rather than the fine-tuning of plans. If its use were purely for emergencies, I wouldn’t carry it around in my back pocket and it wouldn’t have plunged into my plumbing. I admire my father’s use of a cellphone most. He always carries one with him (only because my mom forces him to). But once he has made a phone call, he will turn off his cellphone entirely. So he’s not reachable on his cellphone but he’ll turn it on if told ahead of time that he should be reachable. “No news is good news,” does not apply to the age of cellphones. In my experience with Italians, no news means call-that-person-immediately-and-then-call-his-mother-and-his-sister-and-his-dog-to-tell-them-he’s-alright. I’m only mildly concerned with the fact that I’m not reachable by cellphone these days. I figure they’ll email me if they really miss me. Until my cellphone works again, I’m taking a technological break. Buh-Bye. Oh, but, if you’ve read this, could you send me your number?