The Ultimate Guide to Losing Your Phone This Summer – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

It’s become an essential ingredient for a proper summer break. You can’t truly enjoy your vacation without losing your phone. For reasons I don’t understand — and I’m too exhausted to make up in this heat — phones vanish when you need them and reappear when you’d rather they didn’t.

These devices are so advanced they let you receive forty WhatsApp messages at once while a second call beeps in, three Facebook alerts pop up, ten emails flood your inbox, two thousand Instagram likes roll in, a ChatGPT update pings, a Discord invite appears, a couple of job offers land, seven LinkedIn connection requests stack up, a “trending now” alert from some news app chimes, your calendar reminds you of the call you’re already on, a notification tells you someone you don’t know is now available, a sad tone warns your battery’s dying, and a text urges you to upgrade your glasses — all while you’re trying to talk to your mom on the other end, explaining how the hell to turn off that ridiculous keyboard click sound on her phone.

You can always spot a mom because she’s the one making those keyboard clacks in the back of a church, trying to silence her phone during a funeral.

A Load of Incompatibilities

The phone is a hostile, annoying device, incompatible with rest, the good life, and friendship. It’s also at odds with peace, silence, democracy, freedom, clam rights, beer bottles, Dylan’s songs, the Punic Wars, the law, and candied chestnuts. In short, it’s incompatible with everything except bad manners, emergency calls, and conversations with persistent robot ladies.

The Unpaid Phone Bill

Back in the day, a missed payment notice from a phone company would leave you sweating and panicking. Urgent letters threatening to cut off service could bring tears or even drive some to fling themselves into the sea from a cliff in despair. Things have changed. Now, when they threaten to disconnect your phone for non-payment, you head to the bar and buy a round for all your friends to celebrate. Unfortunately, it still takes a thousand warnings — by land, sea, and air — before they actually cut you off. And even then, after they’ve deactivated your number, they might still call to offer you a new phone model at a bargain price, presumably so you can display it in a living room showcase.

The Elevator Shaft

From my extensive experience losing phones, I’ve concluded nothing beats that tiny gap in the elevator floor, perfectly sized for modern smartphones, keys, and most ‘90s supermodels. You can gently let it slip through or, better yet, enter the elevator loaded with bags, clutching the phone in your teeth, determined not to let it fall through the gap. That’s when it always drops — either the phone or your dentures.

The Car Door Crack

My first phone broke in a car door. Looking back, considering the size and sturdiness of those old Nokias from 20 years ago, it’s a miracle the door didn’t break instead. The phone kept working, though its screen suffered a kind of digital ink hemorrhage with a grim prognosis. I had it in the pocket of a bulky raincoat. I jumped into the seat to escape the rain, slammed the door of my Volkswagen Golf, and was surprised by the steady rebound. So I slammed it harder. On the third failed attempt, I realized part of the raincoat was hanging outside, with the phone caught in the door’s path. This method works even better with vans that have sliding side doors.

At the Beach

Leaving your phone on a towel at any Mediterranean beach is a pretty effective way to lose it — along with the towel and, if you fall asleep, maybe even your virginity. I’ve seen beachgoers try to ditch their phones by chucking them at rocks in the water, but remember: the sea returns everything you give it. It’s a bad idea — eventually, a fish will call to say it found your phone and doesn’t care about your frantic messages.

In Tourist Hotspots

For reasons I can’t fathom, some tourists don’t want to lose their phones. Most tourist spots are heavily patrolled by cops preventing phone thefts and cameras monitoring phones, passersby, and the unofficial girlfriends of opposition politicians. In these places, you’ll have to take matters into your own hands and break it yourself. At waterfalls, canyons, or big cliffs, the hanging selfie works well: lean out over the edge as far as you can while stretching your arm to its limit. It might be a posthumous photo, but no pain, no gain.

Types of Calls

Twenty-first-century phone calls are either inconvenient or unnecessary. Answering them on a beach, a boat, or a mountaintop during vacation is a personal choice. Most employees get mad when their boss calls during a break, but the real truth is, what annoys me most is getting calls during working hours.

Spaceship Mode

Some phones now have a new “mode” that far surpasses the famous “Airplane Mode.” It’s designed for astronauts crossing the atmosphere toward the moon, so they don’t have to explain via WhatsApp why they won’t make it to the bar tonight to watch the game, no matter how big the match or how fun the friends. The SM (Spatial Mode, from its Lithuanian acronym) activates automatically when you start a space flight and leave your phone leaning against the outside of the spacecraft. My phone doesn’t have it yet, but I’ve gotten similar results by sticking it out the train window in an area with lots of signal towers.

READ MORE from Itxu Diaz:

America’s Enemies Are Back (And There Are Fewer of Them Than Before)

Imagine if Biden Did What Spanish Prime Minister Has Done