"Well, I'm not the president, so I don't deserve a fancy phone."

--Arrested Development

My cell phone of five years, an old Nokia, finally died recently. I'm sure many of you remember this old dinosaur of a phone when you carried it around in high school or college; it was originally blue but came with interchangable covers of different colors and patterns to give you options when accessorizing your eveningwear. I myself didn't join the communications bandwagon until my sophomore year at college, but the phone stayed with me through all my trials and tribulations, trials that often resulted in the phone catapulting from my hands and breaking on the floor.

The phone did not have a color screen and predated the now standard camera function by a few years. It wasn't a flip phone, and it couldn't play real songs. It did, however, have a "Composer" function that allowed you to create your own ringtones, something I did with the help of an old friend who found the right combination of keys to press to give me the iconic "Simpsons" theme by Danny Elfman. For those of you who know me, I never changed that ringtone in the five years I used the phone, save only around Christmas when "Frosty the Snowman" was heard beeping from my pocket.

For the past few years, my mom and others have tried to convince me to get a new phone, but I wouldn't budge. You see, the phone's standard feature (that now seems all but extinct in newer models) of having interchangable covers is what allowed my phone to live as long as it did.

I'm not going to admit to being a clumsy man, nor to having butterfingers as it might decrease my chances of being picked quickly in impromptu touch-football games, but let's face it: I dropped that phone a lot. A lot.

When that phone hit the ground, however, the outer shell would burst apart at its seams, the keypad would fly in the air, and the core would bounce on the asphalt. The first time this occured, I thought for sure I had killed my phone. I quickly realized, however, that I could just slide the rubber keypad back over the core, fix the outer shell on both sides, and voila, it was as good as new.

You have no idea how often this occured. My most famous moment happened during my very first visit to East Carolina University with Laura Burdorff (girlfriend of one David Sloan). After a night of drunken revelry in which I left her to see my friend Graham, I tried to find my way back to the correct apartment we were staying at. I arrived at what I thought was the right door on the right floor, but after banging away for a few minutes with no response, I realized I actually had no idea where Laura was and where we were staying.

I started to descend the steps from the third floor of this alien apartment building and pulled out my phone to call Laura. An unstable, drunken gait caused my feet to slip out from under me, and my fingers couldn't grasp the phone during the fall.

I watched in horror as that blue Nokia sailed through my fingers, out of my hand, and into the dark night- right over the stairway balcony. I leapt to the edge and peered over in time to see my phone shrink into the distance and explode on the ground three flights below, an anguished cry escaping my lips.

I ran down the stairs (more carefully this time), and put my phone back together to most appreciately find that it still worked. I called Laura and (she'll back me up on this one because she loves to tell this story too) the first words from my mouth, in such a sad, sorry tone, were "My phone esploded."

After many similar events, I decided that I'd be better off not ever getting a new phone. The collapsible Nokia fit my... excitable nature rather well. If I were to get a newer, more complex, and ultimately more expensive phone, chances are I would have dropped it in three weeks and it would have flat out broken with no hope of repair. The phone companies would have loved that.

Which is why I don't think they make these phones anymore; the companies can't make as much money off of them. Newer phones today are overly complex and designed to have us spend more money. My replacement phones are much harder to navigate than my old Nokia. With my old phone, I knew exactly which buttons to push to dial my father or my voicemail without ever having to look at the screen, something that was quite handy while on the road. I could also change my profiles to go silent while in movie theaters or libraries by only having to hit three buttons.

Today's phone has too many functions to successfully navigate quickly; too many buttons, too many menus. To dial my father or go silent takes far more button pushing than it used to. New phones also seem to be lacking a "Composer" function, so now I will never hear my Simpsons ringtone, or create the theme from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", ever again.

That is, unless, I decide to purchase those tunes online. Yeah, that's right, a way for the phone companies to make more money! (At this point, you're probably thinking I am delving into conspiracy theory, and you're not that far off, really.) Newer phones come with horrible, bland ringtones, a decision, it seems, designed to get us to buy our favorite songs from the internet so we won't have to listen to awful chimes every time someone calls. Want a fun game to play? Well "Snake" is no longer standard, so I'll probably have to buy that too. Only if I can play "Mega Man" or "Donkey Kong Jr." on my phone will I be truly impressed.

Ah, old blue dinosaur Nokia, how I miss you. How I wish I hadn't dropped you in the cold night air onto unforgiving pavement. You still worked, just like you always did, your viewscreen a shining green beacon of functionality (a Bushism). Only now you had grown deaf. You could still chirp "The Simpsons" when my girlfriend called, but no longer could you and I hear what she had to say. No longer could I hear a ringtone when dialing my voicemail. The lines were silent.

And since one-way communication with someone is just a bad, bad idea, I decided it was time to let you retire. Special thanks go out to Leslie Street and Cynthia Wilkinson (my girlfriend's mom) for allowing me to use their old phones during my time of need.

But fear not, blue dino, if I can find a way to make you better, stronger, faster, without the need of six million dollars, you will come out of retirement and see the light of day once again.

--Cbake