Should I Get A Smartphone?

Obviously, I'm not what you'd call an early adopter. I have an old-fashioned LG cell phone that makes calls, receives texts and lets me send back one-word replies by typing on the phone dialing thingy. I can take pictures and video but I can't figure out how to get them off the phone. No internet access. I've had this same phone for at least three years.

You're considered to be a bit odd if you don't have an iPhone. (I realize that even with an iPhone, I'd be odd.) Most people I know have one or something like it. I was recently at a party, and a friend was giving me directions to a restaurant. So she said "take out your phone and I will show you where the place is," assuming that I of course had a phone like that, because everyone in the civilized world does. I wasn't in the mood to explain my  situation, even though she is super nice and would not judge me, so I pretended to be distracted by one of the kids. She ended up walking us to the restaurant.

(We don't have a minivan either, so we're practically living like animals. Our  ten-year-old Ford Focus has squeaky brakes and an unexplained shorts-ruining stain on the front passenger seat. For a while I wanted to get a new car, maybe a BMW mini, preferably pink. But now I sort of love that we have such a crappy car. I find it funny somehow. Maybe it's because when I was growing up, one of the two doors of our Plymouth Valiant was held closed with a rope for years.)

I've cycled in and out of wanting an iPhone. It would be convenient, but there is such a thing as too convenient. (My husband just got an iPhone, and it bothered me when my son started asking Siri algebra questions and she answered them correctly. Do kids use Siri to do their homework?) Also, I didn't even know what a "drop-in" was until I saw the episode of Girls where Hannah is lost at some junk yard with creepy Adam and Marni tells her to "send a drop-in," and she does something with her phone, and then Marni picks them up in a cab. Kids these days have it too easy! Clearly I was out partying in the stone age when getting lost meant you were just screwed. Which I kind of think is the way it should be.

Further, it's hard to justify the expense of a smart phone when you think about the fact that I am rarely out for more than a few hours, and if it is all that urgent I can be reached on my cell. I'm not the Secretary of State. And I worry that I would be one of those people who is constantly texting and looking at the phone when you are out to lunch or trying to have a conversation. I might be checking my comments and the traffic for the blog a lot more often than I already do, and wasting time on Facebook and playing Words With Friends instead of interacting with the real world. And I was just reading about a study that showed that people who spend a lot of time on that stuff are more likely to be depressed.

So that's not good.