skipping stones

‘Friends and Family’. He remembered the advertisement tagline, but didn’t really have any of those. Yet he could save money if he bought two lines, two phones. So he did. He set up the phones as ‘Me’ and ‘You’.

The next day he was in the waiting room of his doctor’s office. Others were looking at their phones, smiling, texting, sharing. So he took out both phones, placed them flat on his thighs, and began a conversation with himself. He called it  ‘You’. The phone vibrated and fell off his leg onto the floor . ‘Sorry, that was ‘me’, I mean ‘you’, as the room gave him a scowl. He found a funny video on YouTube and chuckled. A woman near the door asked him to keep it down. ‘Sorry’. He liked the video so much he sent it to himself. He heard the message alert sound, looked down and saw he had a message. He smiled. 

His own tiny universe. He began to feel a dialogue with the world. It was foreign, but he liked it.

He went to the store and found a crowded aisle. He placed his ‘You’ phone on a shelf, walked a few feet away and dialed it. Most did nothing. Some looked up. One went to the phone. It kept ringing. The person saw ‘You’ on the screen. She answered. ‘…Hello?’ “If you look up you will see a bright light. You are a bright light”. He hung up. She stood still. She put the phone down, and walked slowly away. 

Once she was out of sight, he collected his phone and went to another aisle. The man with two phones noticed a father struggling to manage two children. He waited for his moment, then deftly placed the phone in their cart. He called the phone. One of the children thought the ring was a toy, and grabbed it out of the cart. The father took it hastily out of his hands and saw ‘You’ on the screen. ‘Hello?’ “You are a good father. Show them love.” He hung up. The father looked around, confused, and put the phone on a shelf. In the next aisle he saw the father crawl to a stop, clinch the handle of the cart, and begin to sob. At first his children did not notice. Then one did. He walked to his father solemnly, and hugged his legs. The father put his arms around his son.

At home that night he sat alone in his small, dark living room. He then got up, went to the kitchen, and placed his ‘You’ phone on the counter. He went back to where he was, dialed the phone, then again to the kitchen to answer. ‘Hello?’ He walked back to the living room to respond. As he did he glanced at a photo of his dog, Charlie, who passed away two months earlier. He then picked up the phone in the living room. ‘I thought that might be you. How are you?’

A neighbor walked by, stopped and smiled, seeing through the window he was on the phone.