Stepping back out into the boiling midday sun, I paused so I could heave my chunky camera bag back up onto my shoulder and utter for the millionth time "when I get back to Oz I'm getting a grown-up phone with a camera, that way I don't have to lug this one around".
The Boy, as ever, merely nodded, in a 'yes dear' kind of way and continued to walk on to the next place we'd marked down in our dog-eared copy of the Lonely Planet.
Once upon a time I had played owner to a pretty, petite camera but discovered the hard way that hostel rooms in Brussels aren't always as secure as they seem, when early one morning my camera made a quick getaway. Cranky and camera-less The Boy and I had decided to splurge on a decent camera. But what we hadn't factored in was that a decent camera also meant a decent size and an even more decently sized bag. Hence the grumbling when it could no longer be forced into the backpack for our daily ramblings.
So true to my word, a mere 24 hours after The Boy and I landed in Oz we found ourselves in a store full of very pretty, highly technical phones. I was half-heartedly listening to the assistant as he droned on, flicking his way through page after page of deals and plans while all that was reverberating around my head was one word - pretty! And as hard as I tried I couldn't make myself pay full attention to what was being said somewhere in the space between me and the pretty phones, or to contribute to the intelligent questions The Boy miraculously kept conjuring up. Rookie mistake I know.
But a few hours later I did walk out of that store with a pretty new phone- A Samsung Galaxy to be exact- clutched feverishly in my hands. Only to discover too late I had no idea how to use it. It's pretty screen made fun water-like noises as I touched it and colourful icons promised hours of procrastination-based fun. But that world remained firmly locked away from me, and I was left with just the basics of phone calls in my grasp.
Ten years ago, when I was just a wee lass of 17, I bought my first phone; a brick-like Nokia. Sturdy, reliable and capable only of performing the essentials like phone calls and text messages it was everything I needed. I turned it on in excitement one hot February afternoon and was easily welcomed with open arms into the world of permanent contact. I loved it unreservedly.
But with this new phone I initially felt conned. Despite all its allure it had thrust me into a world I did not know. I tapped the screen hoping to connect with The Bestie and was rewarded with an off-key blip. I gathered up my courage and hesitantly tried opening an application to see what it contained, all the while trying to ignore my three-year-old nephew who was running around my legs while playing with his grandmother's smart phone, blissfully opening games and playing music like there was no tomorrow.
It was official. I had become the old-fashioned person in the room who didn't know how to use modern technology. I was also facing the fact that I may have to ask a three-year-old child to show me how to use my phone.
Embarrassed I began to open more applications, eventually working out how to send a message (cue witty repartee with the Bestie), check my email and take a photo. Exhausted I turned the screen off.
What the hell had I done?
I did grow used to my new toy, and am now enjoying the world of grown-up phones. But after discovering I can, and often am, chatting to The Bestie simultaneously on three different apps I have to wonder: whatever was wrong with a simple phone with just the basics?
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