My phone, "The Brick"

Several weeks ago, when we asked Tim what we should give him for his birthday, he said he’d like a new phone. He’d had his current phone for a year; it was a hand-me-down from me the last time I upgraded. Unlike many parents of middle schoolers, for whom outfitting their pre-teen with a phone is a soul-searching decision, it wasn’t much of an issue for us. Tim really wasn’t that interested in deploying telecommunications; but since he sometimes walks home from school, sometimes rides his bike, and sometimes takes the bus, I thought it would be convenient if he could easily be in touch and let me know what he was doing. I knew he wasn’t interested in spending a lot of time talking to his friends.

So we were curious why he wanted a different phone at this point. He told Rick it was a cause for teasing. “My friends call it ‘The Brick,’” he said.

This seemed implausible to me because Tim’s friends just aren’t the type to tease, moreover, he’s not the type to have a problem with teasing. Unlike some of my friends’ kids who are the same age, Tim’s not particularly concerned with how he fits in or what other kids think of him. Perversely, of course, that means he fits in just fine and other kids get along easily with him. Plus he has that inexplicable and yet timeless advantage of being an athlete. Boys who are known for being good at sports are almost never subjected to teasing, according to a report I read not long ago, and Tim’s experience tends to bear that out.

Later, when we pursued the question again, he downplayed it. “It wasn’t really teasing,” he admitted. “Austin called it ‘The Brick’ maybe one time.” Really, he confessed, he just wanted a phone on which he could send text messages.

Because it wasn’t a convenient time in our phone contract to buy him a new phone, I offered to trade with him. My phone is nothing fancy, but it’s a very slim flip-phone with more features, including a screen that would make texting easy, so we also bought him a texting plan. All we needed to do was switch the SIM cards so that we wouldn’t have to change phone numbers and we were all set.

And so I ended up with the phone they call The Brick, and although I was a little bit grudging about the sacrifice, it turns out I actually like it. Understand, we’re not talking about the first generation of cell phones here. This isn’t like carrying around a cordless in my purse. In reality, The Brick was probably one of the last models made before the advent of flip phones. It’s not all that big and bulky; it’s just…thick and oblong.

And that’s actually an advantage to me, because the slim black flip-phone was always disappearing in my purses and bags. It would slide into a crevice and camouflage against the black interior; I wouldn’t be able to locate it even when it was ringing. With The Brick, this isn’t a problem. It sits stolidly in my purse like a chunk of ice, its lighter gray sheen easy to see against the purse’s dark lining, its moderate heft easy for my fingers to locate.

I’m fine with its lack of fancy features, too. Yesterday when it started tinkling that old familiar Nokia trademark ring, a friend I was walking with said “Oh, how European!” More like “Oh, how two thousand,” I thought to myself; she was clearly reacting to the fact that I didn’t have a clever sound effect or popular song for my ringtone the way most phones purchased in the past five years or so do. The Brick doesn’t offer a lot of choices, though, and the default ring sounds fine to me.

The Brick doesn’t have an interactive screen. I can’t surf the web or access my email with it. I can make phone calls. That’s all I really want to be able to do with my phone. While everyone else wanders around lost in the distraction of apps, tricks, games and features, I don’t think about my phone much unless it rings. Phones the way phones used to be, you could say.

In general, I tend to be attracted to gadgets and new accessories, but this time is different. When I want to make a call, I know how to do it. I have other gadgets that can take pictures, play music, display email and shoot video. I’m fine with The Brick, a simple, straightforward and solid piece of electronica that can do what I need it to do. And until I decide I need to hear a Van Morrison tune every time I get a phone call, I’ll stick with it.