The Girl, Her iPhone and Her Baby Brother
By Anila Angin | 30 January 2011
Love, Satire, Short Stories, Technology, World of beautiful distractions
Photo courtesy of Esha Batish
“You see,” said the girl, one eye fixed on the iPhone she was cradling in her hands, “I could be doing so many other things if I weren’t sitting on the beach today! I have 5,000 friends trying to talk to me on Facebook! And my 12,000 followers on Twitter keep sending updates on what they’re up to – I want to read all of it! And look, I just got an SMS from Jane that I must reply to right now. And I need to update my Tumblr with the latest news, track what all my favourite bands are doing right now, watch that funny video I was told to watch, and, and…”
She bent her head and tapped frantically on the phone with one hand. Her other hand scrolled through her iPod in search of a song to drown the sound of the waves.
Her mother sighed. “But darling, where are your friends? Why don’t they call? Why don’t you go out for long walks with your friends, enjoying each other’s company?”
“My friends are online, mother! Look!” She thrust the phone at her mother. “5,000 friends on Facebook. 12,000 Twitter followers,” she announced proudly. “With this many friends, I can only spare a few seconds for each friend. Certainly not hours with one person!”
“But darling, do your friends care about you? Do they know your secret fears and joys? Do they even know you exist, or are you just another statistic in their arsenal of friends?”
“Arsenal of friends! Mother! These are my friends. Ok, I suppose I haven’t met all of them, but still. They do stuff, I do stuff. They want to know what I’m up to. I want to know what they’re doing.”
“What ‘stuff’ do you talk about when all you do is sit in front of your computer?”
“Stuff like what I’m eating, or what music I’m listening to,” replied the girl, aggrieved.
“Is that so terribly interesting?” asked the mother wonderingly.
“Of course it is! That’s what everyone talks about.”
“But you seem to have forgotten how to communicate, love,” said her mother quietly.
“What do you mean?” asked the girl warily.
“You were texting your sister to come down for dinner yesterday when you were both in the same room! And you texted your father to say you needed to leave early when we were sitting at the same table in that restaurant the other day. And…”
“What’s wrong with that? I happened to be texting someone at that time, so I figured I’d text them as well.”
“But you have become a cyborg, with any number of gadgets surgically attached to your body! You sleep with your iPhone as if it were a treasured doll. You turn on your computer the moment you wake up and your fingers are glued to the keyboard all day. You walk around with headphones stuck to your ears like a muffler.”
“All my friends do that too,” replied the girl sulkily.
“As for me, I’d love to see more of you, darling. I want to see your smile, that cheeky grin when you’re plotting something mischievous. I want to hear your laughter. I want to see that light in your eyes when you savour a dish I have spent hours cooking for you. I want to see your eyes closed in bliss when you look at the sea, or when you catch a sunbird lifting its head from a yellow flower, its beak wet with nectar. And above all, I want to hug you and feel the love in you that is in me.”
“You want many things I don’t know how to give,” said the girl. But inside, she wondered why she often felt so deeply, tragically alone despite her thousands of internet friends.
Her mother sighed again. “Well honey, in any case, the reason we’re here today is because I thought you should know that you’ll have a new baby brother in a few months.”
“A baby brother!” exclaimed the girl. “Oh my, I’ll have to tell all my friends on Facebook and Twitter right away!” And she started tapping on her phone again.
The baby was born.
The girl took one look and fell in love straightaway.
He was pure love. Pure unconditional love. He gurgled. He smiled. He laughed. He was such a happy baby, and his skin was so very soft and delicate.
The girl would often go to her baby brother’s room, phone clutched in her hand. She pressed her nose to his head, placed her cheek against his and whispered, “I love you.”
There were times when she was in her room glued to Twitter, and she thought of sending her brother a message to say she loved him. But then she would catch herself on time, remembering that he had no phone, no computer to receive her declarations of love.
She would get up meekly then, walk over to his room and pick him up in her arms. She measured his heft in the crook of her arms, marvelled at his tiny perfect feet, his little fingers which he loved to curl over her thumb, his delicious baby smell, his soft skin.
He smiled, and her heart melted like ice.
For the first time in many years, the girl understood what it meant to love, what it really meant to have a friend who cared. A friend who gurgled, laughed and whose skin was soft, soft, soft…
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. In addition, the photograph that accompanies this post beautifully captures the essence of the story, but the real life subjects are far from addicted to their phones or social media.
Other stories by the author: The Boy From Radiso Meets The Rich Tourist From Pompoop | The Secret Life of Bosses | The Diamond Collector’s Secret | Birth. Work. Death. | The Receptionist | The Witch Doctor’s Cure
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