I was recently in Brussels with my mother and just because it was exceptionally – and miraculously – sunny, we decided to play tourist and jumped on one of those hop-on-hop-off buses doing the round of the city.

It was all rather enjoyable, the perfect day for a roof top ride; we did the Royal Palace, the Sablon, the Park and so on so forth, until, that is, Stop No. 5, the Art Nouveau corner of the city. As fans of the architectural period, we got off the bus to closely admire the intricate façades of the buildings.

I made to whip my phone out of my jeans’ pocket to take a picture of the decorative, fairy-tale-like ancient façade of a bookshop… but whoa! Where was my mobile? Was it in the other pocket? No. Maybe the other one? Maybe in the backpack? A solitary bead of sweat formed on my forehead.

My phone was on that bus. Now, it so happened that earlier that day, my mother’s phone had packed in, which meant we were completely mobile-less. We could not phone anyone, no one could phone us.

What to do? Have you noticed how there are no coin phones or card phones in any city anywhere, anymore? And even if there were, what would I have done? All my contacts were on the mobile – the only number I know by heart is my mother’s and that’s only because it’s the same as the landline that I’ve known by heart since I was a tot. A pretty hopeless scenario.

I headed to a bar down the road and in my crudest French asked them to “Aidez-moi! S’il vous plaît!” They clearly noticed my sweat bead and took pity – immediately the bar man handed me his landline set and the number of the hop-on-off bus company.

I promise a digital diet from now on

I explain my predicament to the lady who answers the phone and after a significant pause, I get in French-English:

“Oh my Gott! You lost yorr ah-phone! Oh my Gott!”

Erm, yes.

“Oh my Gott! Your ah-phone! Oh my Gott!”

Erm, please don’t panic me more.

“Yorr ah-phone! Oh my Gott! Oh my Gott!”

Please, let’s just all calm down, no one got hurt after all.

“Oh my Gott! Oh my Go… Wait a minute… Madame?”

Yes, I say loud and clear, her tone finally giving me some hope.

“Was the bus colour blue or red?”

Red, I say.

“Ah! Voilà,” she says with a huge sigh of relief. “That’s not ours! We are the blue bus company.”

Dammit, red is just not my colour. “Please you MUST help me still.”

After a thousand “mais, je ne sais pas”, she passed me on to a colleague who dictated to me the number of the red bus service. This time I was greeted by a lady who sounded extremely bored by my story and unlike the other one, seemed to tackle lost iPhone issues 50 times a day. “I’ll send message to bus drivers. Oui? Then I call to tell you. Oui?”

Erm, no, you can’t call me. Remember I have no phone.

“Oui? Alors, comment on vas faire?”

More sweat beads. Erm, erm, uh. I’ll call you back myself in an hour.

In that very long hour, my mother and I discuss how dependent we have become on smartphones. We use the phone as an alarm to wake up; we use it as a portable camera; we use it instead of a landline; we use it to keep abreast with real time news; we use it to watch live events; we use it to tell people we’re stuck in traffic and running late; we use it as a map and location locator; we use it when we travel to carry digital documents instead of a flurry of paper tickets.

Since when have an e-mail prompter, a Twitter dashboard and social network controller been packed all in one handheld device stuck to our hands for 24 hours a day?

What is odd is that this increase in dependence on our phones happened so quickly that I can actually remember a time, only a mere three years ago, when I did not have a smartphone. Only three years ago I did not check my e-mails at night time; the last thing I did before falling asleep was read a book and not check the latest news; I did not feel I had to verify things on Google every time someone said something; the first thing I did in the morning was not look at the screen and stay hooked on to it for 10 minutes, but say good morning to the people I love; and above all people around me were not all the time staring at a screen.

Did the smartphone make life easier? In some ways definitely yes, but in others, I sometimes wish that it was never there. Was it time for a digital diet, perhaps? Time to cut down a bit on the dependence and reliance of the gadget?

Maybe, but in the meantime we had to solve the little problem of how to get back on the grid, because the truth is that if you’re not on your phone, you can’t be contacted. In a very surreal, movie-like move, it can very well feel that without a mobile you become very transparent. And more pressingly, our flight back documents were on that phone.

An hour later I go back to the bar and call the lady of the red bus. “The bus driver found it. Oui?”

“Oui! Oui! Oui!!” Thank you Gott for returning the ah-phone. I promise a digital diet from now on.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti