April 05--It was the trip of a lifetime to a part of the world I had never been, a week of one unforgettable sight after another made all the better by having my wife, kids and mother with me to share it.
It was great.
So why was it that at least once a day, sometimes several times a day, I found myself longing for the one close companion I had made a point to leave behind?
Oh, how I missed my smartphone!
Not bringing it along -- and making a point of not borrowing other people's phones -- was probably the right thing to do. I'll state that upfront.
Mom didn't have to grimace through another family meal of my furtive glances at a screen no one else was supposed to notice. The son and daughter knew it was fruitless to pester me to let them play games.
Study after study says we know we're too dependent on our phones and acknowledge it is a wedge between us, our families and special occasions.
But my grand experiment in living like it was 1999, completely untethering from the workaday world, was sometimes less nirvana than nervewracking, and not necessarily in ways I would have expected.
Too often I found myself saying to myself, "You know, if I had my phone, I could help with that."
Even worse, too often I found myself saying it out loud, which I'm sure was even less charming than it sounds.
No phone meant my focus was indeed squarely on the landscape and other attractions as we traveled by bus, boat, rail and foot.
It also kept me from looking up information that might have enhanced my appreciation of what I saw, where I was seeing it and what might have been just out of sight around the corner.
Yes, I was able to fully engage with my kids. My kids, however, had others their own age to hang with, and those kids had phones to play with.
I had to lug an actual camera around. Can you imagine?
I got irritable when the time came to choose where to eat, unable to consult a map and reviews to determine the best nearby bistro or the specialty of the house when one was finally selected.
When there was apparent confusion among chefs and servers over whether olives are a tree nut, would online information and translations have allayed everyone's allergy concerns? Maybe.
Even without the phantom vibrations I sometimes felt for incoming texts I wasn't receiving, I was acutely aware of the void in my pocket and an appreciation of just how integral my phone has become.
When I'm home, it's the alarm I wake to, a fount of news and where I keep much of my leisure reading material (including travel guides). I use it to make notes to myself, for entertainment and it's where the answers are to questions such as: What's the best way to soothe sore feet?
I was freed from constantly sorting through largely irrelevant emails, tweets and Facebook posts. Turns out I didn't miss that at all, which was an eye-opener.
Every couple of days, though, I found myself in a hotel business center doing a mass purge to avoid overload from 400 or so daily emails piling into my work and personal accounts daily.
I read a few. I probably deleted some unread that I shouldn't have. If yours was in there, sorry. I didn't respond to more than a dozen in eight days, which was liberating.
So too was disconnecting from Facebook and Twitter. I was left to guess what everyone thought about whatever Donald Trump said while I was gone.
But when two groups go off in separate directions, your phone makes it easier to coordinate meeting up again and keeps you from getting lost.
Your phone tells you how hot or cold it's going to be, so you don't sweat or shiver.
Your phone enables someone meeting you at the airport to tell you where to find him.
That's important because even after the best trip with your family, you don't want to waste any time getting home for an emotional reunion with an absent friend waiting there.
I can't wait to share the pictures with my phone.
philrosenthal@tribpub.com
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