Her obsessive romance with her phone, which repeatedly came in the way of our acquaintance, can be likened to having a conversation with the deaf. So I had proceeded to ignore this new question; one of the many she had asked, while she took intermittent pauses, with the usual vacant look, from her dialogue with her imaginary phone character who was intent on ruining my evening. I was going to treat it like a rhetorical question, but leaning close to me, she asked the question again, insisting on an answer and throwing me off balance for a moment.
My response was quick and brusque, "I don't use a Blackberry" Almost immediately, I saw the shock in her eyes. Her unspoken expression was; how could you not have a Blackberry in this age and time? Then she seemed to switch off completely. Her expression became distant as she now looked past me, as if addressing a phantom each time we managed to find something to talk about. I was amused by it all. I had met the restless 20-something university belle some hours earlier in the company of my young cousin. We ended up in one of those clubs on the island where you will have to spend some nervous moments scrutinising the menu.
I was immediately struck by her almost compulsive attraction to her BB phone. All through our conversation, she stayed glued to it, her fingers tapping furiously at the tiny buttons on the keypad. She was a sight to behold and her addiction, her passion, became a spectacle. As she tapped frantically, she would pause occasionally, a frown appearing on her brow. At another time, she would laugh out hysterically, rocking back and forth on the chair with a loud yell. People turned to look. She hardly noticed, or did not care. When the waiter appeared to take our order, she was not listening. She was completely oblivious of the happenings around her. As soon as she realized I am no BB user, our conversation seemed to freeze out. I became another statistic, another face in the crowd.
But I had it coming. Since the Blackberry phone made its classy foray into the telephone consciousness of the upwardly mobile, I have been indifferent to its ability to quickly transform one's status symbol; or does it not? I have never taken myself seriously. Many years after Nokia 3310 became embarrassingly outdated, I carried mine with pomp. Recently, I walked into one of the mobile telephone shops, just as I had done in the last one year, and each time, I came out with my wallet intact.
Despite the craze that followed the introduction of the Blackberry, is it really compulsory to use one? What are the unique features of a BB, aside from instant emailing, that make it a must have for a Year One student in a university, other than the status symbol that goes with logging it around? Okay, maybe it is useful for folks who have loads of emails to answer per second. Otherwise, what is the point of a young person barely 18, paying monthly surcharges just for chatting, tweeting and facebooking? Or does it have to do with the good feeling of owning a BB?
Inside a Lagos bus, I sat with guy who ensured that his Blackberry was conspicuously angled in a position where everybody could see. He was barely 16. My young cousin told me that in students' parties, you will be "gated" without a Blackberry phone. Now the Blackberry craze has claimed its first casualty, a girl chatting passionately while crossing the road was knocked down recently in Ajah. I became the latest casualty the other day when I was "dumped" for not being able to provide my BB pin. Now you see why I have to get a Blackberry, if only to keep up with the Joneses.
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