Well, he looks harmless...

I'm kind of proud to be part of the last "generation" to go through college without the widespread use of cell phones. There was no Facebook... no checking in when you got someplace, no knowing when all of your friends were meeting up without you, no worrying about how you looked as you dash next door to the dining room at 10:30 PM for mozzarella sticks because you might run into a friend who might snap a picture of you waiting on line and post it for all the world to see, no fidgeting fingers or lack of eye contact (though I think, at times, too much eye contact might have gotten me in trouble as well...). I didn't text or tweet or poke... I called people on a landline, sent them instant messages and... well... ok. Maybe there was a bit of poking. But it was done in real life. I was aware of cell phones and the rapidly changing technology, but I enjoyed not being accessible at all times and I seriously wish I could go back without putting myself at a social, or even financial, disadvantage.

Take the time a group of us cut class and went swimming out in the Wallkill River. First, we never thought to Google (Alta Vista? Netscape?) a water quality report-- because now that I know what is in the Wallkill, I'll never swim in it again. It was hot. How hot? I dunno. I didn't have a TV or a handheld device to tell me, and my car didn't have a built in thermometer. It was hot enough that we had to put our clothes back on to leave our dorm room and walk to the car. Hot enough that not all of us wore shirts while we drove out. It wasn't hot enough for my car to overheat. I'm guessing mid 90s. Next, no one knew where we had gone. We didn't show up in our appointed classes and we didn't post on any social media website "Fuck this. Too hot. Going swimming. Hit us up at the rope swing."We didn't run into anyone on our way out to the van or see anyone we knew at the swimming hole. If one of us had drowned, we were a good 10 minutes from the nearest phone- we wouldn't have been able to call for help or look up how to do CPR. On the way back-- we stayed as long as we wanted since I don't think anyone was wearing a watch-- we picked up a hitchhiker. He looked ok. A little scruffy. There were 3 or 4 of us in the car and at least one of us was a burly, hairy chested guy. Again- no phone... no posting, "About 2 pick up a hitchhiker. Call 4 help if I don't post again," with a location tag on the end of it to help them find the bodies. 4 college kids in a car with a hitchhiker. We kinda liked the guy and went out to dinner with him afterwards, arriving back in our dorm rooms tired, sunburned, full and ready to strip back down to next to nothing and wait out another long night without A/C, NetFlix or YouPorn. Feels like the StoneAge. 

Or the night I went to a... ummm... a gathering... with a bunch of friends and ran into a much older acquaintance from class and decided to go back to her place (with her 7 year old son) to hang out for awhile. My friends knew who I had left with... her first name at least... though I had no idea where she lived or how long I was gonna be gone. We talked and ate and played with tarot cards until about 1 in the morning and then she loaded her sleeping kid into the back seat and we decided to drive off into the mountains to look at the full moon. I've spent years trying to figure out where the hell she took me and, while I've narrowed it down to a few spots, I'm still not completely sure. Sadly I didn't have an iPhone (or, you know, an instant Kodak camera) with me, so I only have memories to go on.  I got dropped back off at my dorm by 3 and, without anywhere to post the photos that I didn't take, I went to bed. Woke up the next morning and decided to keep most of it to myself. Not for any particular reason. Maybe just because I could. 

While I know cell phones would have been hella convenient in some cases (might have saved us a 4 hour round trip drive that time our dear Cx missed her bus to Saratoga Springs...) I can't even begin to imagine how much more tangled my webs would have been if I had to worry about living in both the physical plane and the interweb plane simultaneously. I loved having my space to disappear  when I wanted to (and yes, I know that I could still disappear if I wanted to, but not in the same way), my space to fudge the truth a little bit without having to worry about an online footprint giving me away, my space to fuck up royally and have time to smooth things over before they went viral. As much as I enjoy keeping in touch with distant friends and family through Facebook-- seeing their photos and statuses, keeping our communication open through snippets and "likes"-- I miss sitting with people for hours on end and filling each other in on all of the stuff that we now just post about. I miss being able to read their tone of voice, their body language, catching fleeting expressions as they talk. I wonder how much of that has been lost on the newest generations of college kids-- and even in the adult relationships I form now. How many chances to connect in person are missed because my attention is divided between the conversation I'm having in person and the conversation I'm having on Facebook... how many sidewards glances, slow deep breaths, rolled eyes or gentle shifts towards or away from someone. How many impromptu swims have I missed because I was too busy checking the EPA's website?