What to do when your phone dies
Borrow the cell phone display from a store, make eye contact, or ask people if they like your meal when your phone is dead
Life with a dead phone (Keet Kailey)
You just finished running your errands and are on your way home. As you start walking, you reach for your phone but find it dead, the rectangle lying lifelessly in the palm of your hand. A look of horror reflects back at you on the black, empty, screen. The feeling of regret bubbles inside you, then a feeling much worse overtakes you: boredom.
It won’t be long before you completely break down because you’re now empty of a mobile device to constantly stimulate your brain with mindless information. You need to resurrect your dear companion urgently.
If you happen to be anywhere near an electronics store, you’re in luck. Go to the store’s cell phone section and yank a tester phone off its display and hurl it aside. Disregard the blaring alarm and flurry of agitated security guards heading your way and put your dead phone on the charging mount instead.
After you are inevitably thrown out of the store and banned from entering its premises again, you sadly find your phone didn’t get a sufficient charge and remains dead to the world. Maybe barging-and-charging is not the most ideal of plans. Tragically, your only other option left is to learn to live with a dead phone.
Considering you are a novice deceased phone owner, start by making eye contact with people. Not only will your text neck thank you for looking up and easing muscle strain, but you will get a golden opportunity to improve your social skills.
Whether it be on the bus or at work, prolonged eye contact with folks around you will straighten out your neck. It would be best to focus your attention on a single person to start this practice, before moving on to the next level. Just hold eye contact with the person sitting on the bus across from you until you feel confident enough to look at two people.
If for some reason the individual you have placed your full and uninterrupted attention on feels uncomfortable and begins to question why you’re staring at them, simply explain that your phone is dead. They will understand. Why else would you be staring at them anyway?
Despite your dead phone, you can still use the apps by recreating them.
Instead of taking a photo of your fancy crab cakes to post on Instagram to get people’s approval, just walk around the restaurant and ask the other diners if they like the presentation and what they think of it. This is better in-person anyway, because you will inspire them to order the same thing.
Actually, these alternatives might make you seem a bit awkward. Just pack a charger next time, okay?
