Chapter 3: My issues with…big phones and small purses

I just received another invitation to a black tie event. This upsets me greatly.

Not the dress code — who doesn’t appreciate getting a heads-up on what to wear? Even if we have to turn to Google to de-code infuriating words like business formal, creative black-tie, creative cocktail, festive dress, casual dressy, or those snazzy invites that have the audacity to state, “Dress code: Fabulous!”

Personally, I would like to come up with my own dress code that goes something like: Dress for a “damn, you look good” reaction! And leave it at that.

Where it was once — emphasis on once — customary to wear floor-length gowns to black tie events, someone, somewhere (was there a secret meeting amongst celebrity stylists? Are they the same people who came up with casual Fridays, or who decided that bikini tops do not have to match bikini bottoms, or who told us to "dress for success?”) decided that black-tie should be adapted in this modern age to be more lenient. (Whoever you are, thank you!)

Now, us women can get away with cocktail dresses, dressy skirts paired with elegant tops, upscale tuxedo-like pants, sparkly jumpsuits, or your dressiest LBD (little black dress), which is always the simplest and most stress-free option.

What has not changed, however, is the expectation to arrive with an elegant evening bag. This stresses me out. Unlike men, women need purses to survive. We don't have pockets hidden in our LBD. (And never let anyone tell you that you don't need another purse. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.)

I have a few so-called evening purses. My iPhone now fits into…none of them. (I'm starting to see, and covet, these new fold-up phones that open like a book and have two screens. But last time I checked, they started at almost $2,000.)

Maybe you’ll be reading this in the year 2036 when you’re on iPhone 39, and if phones get bigger, you will have no choice BUT to carry your “mom purse” — you know, the one that is so ridiculously large and full that when you place it on the passenger seat, your car’s seat belt signal starts beeping. At times I’ve even thought, while booking restaurant reservations, perhaps I should click three guests, so there will be a seat for my purse.

You can recognize my expensive pursues by the way I protect them. If it so much as drizzles, that purse gets sheltered under my coat, or I’ll make a mad dash out of the venue, you’d think I was competing in an Olympic relay.

It’s not just that my evening purses (and phones) are expensive but…okay my evening purses (and phone) were really expensive. And now?

My evening purses may as well be totally obsolete, because well, they are basically useless. All because of a man named Steve Jobs, who doesn’t understand that us women — the ones taking a few thousand selfies from our phones before posting the one photo we actually like and is passable to share on all dozen social platforms — still need evening purses AND our phones.

The (first-world) struggle is real.

While someone, somewhere, decided to be more lenient with dress codes, they seemed to forget that most women still need to carry around the basics, especially if we’re going to a formal or even semi-formal event: make-up, a brush/comb, credit cards and ID, keys, and, again, our phones. (And, in my case, often a charger. A dress code may scare me, but not as much as seeing that my phone battery is in low-power mode.

I can't live without my phone, which I rarely use as a phone. The last instance I used it as an actual phone was to call my daughter, away at college, to ask what she’s been up to. You know what she told me? “Just look at my Instagram page.”

But when I do use my phone as a phone, I always use the speaker. You should know this because if you call me and I actually answer — I do not answer unknown callers or numbers I do not recognize, because I do not care that I won a free cruise — the first words out of my mouth will be, “You’re on speaker phone!” I will have full-on intimate conversations as I'm walking or in a line-up, so perfect strangers hear everything you and I say. Yup, I’m that person.

And here’s hoping that there isn’t a serious emergency, because it’s actually very rare that my phone facial recognition recognizes my face, no matter how many times I reset it.

I seriously wonder if I worry about my phone more than I worry about my kids, which I'll explain momentarily. My average “screen time” on my phone last week was more than 12 hours, which may seem like a lot but isn't really, since I also use it for work.

Which I probably shouldn't admit because now if you text or call me and I don’t respond, you’ll think I'm ignoring you, which I probably am.

Because I share 50/50 custody (now modernized as “shared parenting-time”) with my nine-year-old son’s father, plus the fact that my above-mentioned 18-year-old daughter is away, it may be possible that I really did spend more “quality” time last week with my phone than my kids.

Also, I bought my phone just over six months ago, and there's already an updated model, so my phone is not the “newest” anymore, which makes me want to cry (send your thoughts and prayers.) What to do: buy that new $1,000 phone because it’s new and pretty, or keep the one that’s less than a year old?

It does seem I freak out more over my phones than I do my kids — kids who were also pretty much raised by, or on, phones. No, I do not believe it is unreasonable for a nine-year-old to have a phone.

Pft, never mind nine-year-olds! I see toddlers watching videos or playing games on their parent's or caregiver’s phone all the time while being pushed around in their strollers…strollers that have phone holders. Because no one can leave their home without their phones anymore.

What if, god forbid, you spot a gorgeous sunset, and you don’t have your phone on you? What if you walk past beautiful leaves, and you can’t capture the moment? Even on vacation, we take our phones to the beach so we can listen to music and take photos of our legs on the sand, which seems to be a thing.

Modern parents are practically raising an entire generation of tantrumless kids. The minute a kid starts whining or crying in public, BOOM. The phone distracts them. In that moment, this is definitely a plus.

Of course, as pro-phone as I am, I’m not blind to the negative side of all this. Modern parents are raising a generation of phone-addicts, which leads to experts talking about “screen time” and taking “digital detoxes.”

I’m on my phone all the time, which I’m the first to admit. Clearly, then, I can’t be an addict…because I'm not in denial. (Let’s put aside those moments of utter panic when I cannot find my phone and feel as though I’m having a heart attack.)

Thanks to my phone, it's very rare that anyone has my full attention these days. This includes My Guy, who is well into his fifties — and who I also recently screamed at, as if he were a child, because he was looking down at his phone while we were walking through a busy parking lot.

Bike lanes in the city are nice and all, but what we could really use is a “walking while on your phone lane.”

I had to drive a friend to an appointment the other day. I texted her when I pulled into her driveway, and when she got into my car, she accidentally dropped her phone, which fell in between the seats. You would have thought by her panicked reaction that she had dropped her phone into a ravine, or her diamond wedding ring down the drain.

Thankfully, I had my phone. Which has a flashlight. Which helped me find her phone (and also helps me read menus in dimly lit restaurants).

And for a second, I was suddenly panicking, shouting, "Where’s my phone? WHERE IS MY PHONE?” before it took the two of us to realize — duh — the phone was in my hand, the flashlight still on.

Luckily, we found her phone because 20 minutes later, her 19-year-old daughter Facetimed her from her apartment in LA, moaning that she felt too sick to go out and buy some soup and medicine. Within five minutes, my friend had ordered her some essentials to be delivered from an LA pharmacy to her LA apartment, from her phone, in her hands, in Toronto.

It’s pretty amazing what you can do with a phone.

I lose — or rather think I lose — my phone at least four times a day, even if I don't leave the house, resulting in me yelling, “Can someone call me? CAN SOMEONE PLEASE CALL ME?” (See why your kids need phones? It's really for you.)

And that’s when I’ll hear that familiar ring from my purse, or under a pile of clothes, or between a pile of papers, or sometimes right on the kitchen counter, where I had placed it four seconds earlier.

Once I even freaked out while texting someone from my phone, who asked me to send over a signed document they needed from me immediately, to which I actually texted back, “It’s on my phone. I just have to find my phone.” (Palm to face moment.)

My phone makes life more efficient. I'm truly like an octopus on my phone, doing eight things at the same time. I can be talking while searching the pharmacy’s phone number, while ordering dinner to be delivered, while taking down notes for my to-do-list, while shooting over a photo to someone, while returning texts, while wishing people happy birthday on social media, while checking my maps to navigate my way to point B — all at the same time!

The other day, I booked an entire vacation to Mexico on my phone…during a Zoom meeting. Like I said, no one has my full attention anymore, which is why the other most oft-used sentence that comes out of my mouth is, “What were you just saying?”

I tell My Guy I love him at least once every day. But I ask him, “What were you just saying?” about 12 times a day, because as he’s talking, I'm ordering an outfit I like, that I will get regular text updates on about tracking, on my phone, right up until it's outside my door.

I'm not sure, to be totally candid, if my phone works for me or I work for my phone. While I know it makes my life more efficient — it’s my alarm, it tells me the temperature, it’s my calendar — it’s constantly asking for my password, my face recognition, asking me to join new Wi-Fi networks, and beeping non-stop with new messages, which at last count, came from nine different places.

Sometimes, I’m just like, “What more do you want from me?” But on the rare occasion I don’t have my phone on me, I’ve learned that…I definitely don’t like it.

While it may seem I worry about my phone as much as I do my kids — if my kid takes a tumble, my heart jumps and I race over to see if he's okay, the relief equivalent to seeing that my phone is okay after I drop it, which also happens multiple times a day, making my heart jump — one thing is apparent: Either phones need to be redesigned, or the black tie dress code needs to be modernized so that “larger purses" are acceptable.

I certainly can’t be the only one thinking this. Maybe I’ll conduct a poll asking my readers…from my phone.