I'm at a Payphone

I imagine that could be the case for the poor mope whose phone I found this morning. Well, I actually found only half of it, the keypad side of a Samsung SCH-R630. That’s one of those slider models, where you orient the phone horizontally and slide the screen up to reveal the qwerty keyboard. 

Sad to say, the phoneless one probably hasn’t been to a payphone because they’re pretty scarce these days. Obsolete in the cellphone era. That’s what technology does, makes old technology practically worthless. Of course the resultant rarity of the outdated objects can also lend a desirability to those odd bits of history. Friends were fawning over the quaint rotary dial phone on the wall of a small-town bar last weekend. One reminisced about the matching model in her childhood home; another said she would love to have one again.

I hardly think, though, that nostalgia accounts for the existence of 3.25-inch floppy disks on a shelf in the Monmouth College bookstore. What’s with that? History of the Home Computer 101? And the box wasn’t full; somebody had bought a diskette or two. Huh?

The other question remains: Why was half a cellphone lying in the gutter on North Seminary Street? Did it simply fall out of the garbage, having been discarded because it died or was replaced by a sexy new iPhone? Did an angry lover grab her cheating boyfriend’s phone and chuck it out the window as they drove home from Buffalo Wild Wings, where he repeatedly texted his mistress? Maybe it just slipped from the back pocket of some kid on her way to school.

Such are the mysteries of the streets.

While I found only a small emblem from a Toyota today, the stylish oval-around-T design, I have in the past picked up entire wheel covers. I learned last August how those end up on the side of the road. It seems obvious, but they seem pretty well fixed on the wheel. I was surprised then when I hit a good pothole on the Eisenhower or one of those big name expressways that circle Chicago and watched as the left front wheel cover of my daughter’s Corolla went rolling across a lane of traffic and into the median. Unfortunately none of the covers I’d collected would fit her bare wheel.

I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

Today's Stats

Temp: 65 degrees F

Distance: 5.25 miles

Weekly Total: 8.5 miles

Treasure: 1 Samsung SCH-R630 phone keypad (missing screen, back, battery); 1 small Toyota emblem (plastic); 15 cans (including 1 Country Time Lemonade)

iPod Playlist (On Shuffle):

My Need – Janet Jackson

Junk – The Beatles

Just What I Needed – The Cars

Don’t Cross the River – Garth Brooks

I Wanna Be a Cowboy – Boys Don’t Cry

Mutineer – Bob Dylan (Zevon cover)

Easy Lover – Phil Collins

Come On In My Kitchen – Steve Miller Band

Heartbreak Warfare – John Mayer

Come Away With Me – Norah Jones

More Than a Feeling – Boston

Dirty Life &Times – Warren Zevon

Rock You Like a Hurricane – Scorpions

I’m Game – Christophe Beck (“Angel” TV soundtrack)

All My Loving – Jim Sturgess (“Across the Universe” soundtrack)