It’s official, I have come out of the closet and am confronting my addiction. I will be available for group therapy and counseling sessions to all you fellow recovering addicts. (In fact, I actually dropped mine into a bathtub a few weeks’ ago which finally got me on the wagon, but that’s another story…..). Here are some telltale symptoms:
1) Onboarding a new job. Your chief concern is your new firm’s PDA policy. Will they support Blackberry? Will they buy you that latest model that has you salivating, or will they force you to use some bug-ridden Microsoft pocket PC thing? You really don’t want to look at the new Health plan, that 401K, or expense policy until that all-important PDA issue has been resolved. You proceed to spend your first afternoon selecting your preferred PDA, and the majority of your fourth day (when it arrives) talking to tech support getting the thing working. Then you worry profusely that you didn’t select the right model (that suretype method sure is tricky) and that leather pouch just don’t look quite as sexy clipped to your belt as you had envisioned…
2) ADD. You knew you had a latent case, but now it’s fully rampant. Conversations can barely last 2 minutes before you have to have a sneak. You start to hang out with other addicts at work to avoid feeling awkward…
3) Driving. You have mastered the art of one-handed emailing on the dreaded device while changing lanes on the tollway at 75 mph. Oh – and the quick “two hands off the wheel routine” to switch between applications is a little risky, but you have already resigned yourself to the fact that crackberrying comes with death-defying risks.
4) Flying. A) You have already been busted on several occasions by flight attendants for taking a sneak-peak after the “turn off all your electrical devices” warning. I mean – are you really going to derail your plane just ‘cause your pilot’s got some annoying feedback going off in his headphones? and B) Upon your plane hitting the tarmac you are primed and ready with your finger at the “on” switch for the very moment the pilot pads his breaks. You thank the Lord for the invaluable extra 120 seconds of Crackberry time you created for yourself as a result of your precision timing, before staring intently at the little screen to watch those new memos pop into view….
5) Social occasions. Your spouse has specifically warned you about Crackberrying in front of the guests. The conversation is caught in a vociferous debate between the merits of the ’86 Margaux and that great run of ’99 Cabs…. You can’t take it anymore… you sneak to the washroom…just one reception bar, but that’s enough to get those little memos popping in….phew.
6) The Bedroom. Your spouse has banned it…you have resorted to hiding it in the bedside table drawer….you wake up at 4.00am in a cold sweat….”just a quick hit” you think, sneaking it out of the drawer….you feel a slap…you turn around and there she is – a look of ferocious hatred on her face….oh no, this isn’t good….
7) Brickbreaker. You have a colossal problem here – you have spent more time on this mind-numbing game that you did with the ‘Cube in the ‘80s…you start having conversations about the infernal game with complete strangers also playing it on planes…”I just can’t get past that level with all the bricks blah blah”.
8) Power-precautions. You have a spare battery (always fully charged) and a spare charger. Now that is serious….even I wasn’t that bad J
A Crackberry addict spotted earler. This one clearly has issues….
Posted in : Absolutely Meaningless Comedy
