My Phone Or Ours?
Tumie Modise | Monday September 7, 2015 15:21
Carcasses of butterflies on the windscreen of the family car was a sure way of knowing that your partner is not only a sneaky, lying cheater, but that they even go on joy rides with whoever while you think they are at work or at some pub with friends!
In the same vein, unless yours was an arranged courtship, hooking up with potential partners involved going to strategic places like the church or malls, and for a few weird people, even bars. Initiating relationships was hard and this is why some folks even ended up with their ‘childhood sweethearts’ or even their neighbours as lifetime partners.
Fast forward to this era, meeting up new people, and if you already have that person, snooping on their mobile phone is the most common and easiest way of catching them out if you smell foul play. Fact is, human beings are tricky and very unpredictable by nature. I doubt it even started at that Garden of Eden. It’s natural to first look out for yourself, never mind the other person. Animals do it; we share a DNA with them after all.
It goes without saying that new technology has been a blessing to mankind but what we never saw, was the set of problems it would bring along, with all these fantastic gadgets. These harmless devices have left a trail of broken hearts, broken families and the worst of them all, a couple of graves, both marked and unmarked. People have died for their cell phones and it’s not a joke. One only has to visit any court to appreciate the reality of this situation. Every single day suits and counter suits fly around and majority of them have cell phones listed as third respondents, even exhibits. Visit any family counsellors around, and they will tell you almost all domestic disputes between couples involve cell phones. Many cell phones have become collateral where they were smashed in heated debates. One wonders how cheating was done before the advent of cell phones. The situation with these gadgets is so bad that some people would actually visit the toilet in the middle of the night with their phones. Several more have had to fish out the gadget from the toilet after the gadgets made their way into the loo before everything else, because truth is, if it is your house then you are likely to get into the loo with your eyes closed. I have been in situations involving a cell phone, well almost everyone has been and believe me, it’s the trickiest of situations. It does not matter whether you are up to no good or not, the experience can get quite traumatic. The worst thing in the world has to be discovering your partner holding your phone, not only holding it, but going through your private conversations. When that happens, and I speak for everybody, your heart stops beating for a few seconds, your mouth dries up and your eyes blink twice. Always twice. It is instinctive, whether there is incriminating ‘evidence’ in your phone or not.When this happens, and you are lucky to get your cell phone afterwards, common sense then spells that you should avoid that situation next time, at all costs. That is it. The nightmare begins. From there on you become a virtual slave of your gadget. It becomes your second skin. When you go to bed, either it’s off, tucked under your pillow or there somewhere nearby, belly down. God forbid that you should leave it belly up, because in a few hours you would all wake up to a blue lit room! A simple month-end message from Mascom can escalate into a fully-fledged war! I had an interesting discussion with friends over this same discussion the other day. The reactions were crazy, others just downright hilarious. Fact is, some folks don’t take kindly to their privacy being invaded in that fashion. You can touch everything else in their space, even shave all their hair while they sleep, but don’t dare touch their phones! Several reasons were advanced; with others claiming that they keep ‘company secrets’ on their mobiles, while others didn’t even have time to advance any reasons. Their phones are out of bounds, period.