Talking The Talk.

Though I'm not one of them, we all know those people who are a cell phone's worst enemy. I'm talking about your friends from college or high school that drop off the face of the earth, only to call you two weeks later from an unknown number saying they had to buy a new phone (usually their third or fourth in the last handful of months) because they dropped it into a toilet at a bar, left it in some cab, gave it to a homeless person or angrily and drunkenly spiked it onto concrete, shattering it completely.

I'm proud to say that since using my mother's old school Nokia (the no-color 1 inch by 1 inch screen with the Mexican Hat Dance ringtone), I have only owned three other phones. Two Motorolas through the first three years of college and midway through my senior year I upgraded to a Nokia camera phone.

Between getting $15 in text message overage charges, my year-and-a-half old battery rapidly losing life, my charger breaking and my newly acquired adulthood, I figured it was time to up the technology in life. The burgeoning use of text messaging has rapidly taken over how we communicate. In today's world, it's more convenient and timely to send a five word text message rather than bear the onus of actually speaking to another human. My old text message plan was a measly 400 a month, so every time I sent a text or received one it would be deducted from the total. With the overwhelming amount of free-texters on the Verizon network, it was difficult to eschew social inquiries of college weekends and even harder to tell people to flat out not send me messages. A person my age these days who doesn't text is essentially a social and technological pariah. My consistent overage charges would cause me to shake my head in disappointment so in the spirit of President Obama, it was time for change.

I weighed my available options. I could ride out the final year of my T-Mobile contract with my elderly phone, paying 15-20 dollars extra a month, pay an early termination fee and join another network or figure out the upgrade I was due. I was getting some pressure from friends to join iPhone nation. The big problem with that was the early termination fee and the exorbitant data fees and start-up costs. I was also weary of how drastic an increase in technology the iPhone would bring. Though I've grown up with the incoming waves and feel I can hold my own, I don't consider myself a techie. What scared me also is the endless stream of iPhone app commercials. There are tons of them; one literally for anything. Need to find a cab? Your own car in a parking lot? Movie times? Restaurants? Calories per meal? Drug dealers? There is an application for just about everything. It would have been too much to handle and I would've been drowning as soon as I got it. And besides, I received a complimentary iTouch with my MacBook, so that would be overkill.

Then my mind wandered to the BlackBerry. Did it fit my adulthood criteria? It came with an unlimited messaging plan that included text and email. I could have all my gmail and school email accounts forwarded right to the handheld. It also came with an unlimited web browsing plan. I could check out the latest ESPN news and google innocuous information at any point in the day. And last but certainly not least, it looked professional and badass. Making phone calls now would not only look awesome, but I would no doubt sound awesome. Schools I call now would not only recognize me to be sexy and professional, they will absolutely find me to be well-qualified to join their faculty merely by the sound of my voice.

Even though I haven't had any job offers let alone any real call-backs yet, at least I can look cool holding the phone to my ear, nodding and repeating the phrase: "Yes, yes this does sound like a good fit."