Oh, You and Your Electronic Baggage

"Hey lets go on a hike!"
"Just a second, I need to charge up my Blackberry..."
"Okay, I think I just got a text..."

Dating in the 2010's requires a strong back and extra pockets. Between you and your loved one, you have at least one cell phone, an iPod, a Blackberry, an iPhone, Nano, Shuffle, Notebook, laptop and assorted flash drives chained to your keys.

"Hang on honey, I have to take this call."

"captive, bound and double-ironed with chains long, and wound about him like a tail; it was made... of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel." A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

In the story "A Christmas Carol", Jacob Marley appears to Ebenezer Scrooge weighted down with the burden he carries from the life he lived before. We are that modern day ghost of Jacob Marley, weighted down with the instruments that jot another entry into the ledger of our lives. We drag and pull these "things" that tie our mortal bodies down to earth and to an existence that is validated by the number of texts and comments posted on our Facebook walls.

"Turn that off, please."

You can't, and if you do, the moment you can turn it on again you check for missed calls and what was happening on your Friendfeed, sometimes you hide in the bathroom and run the sink to masquerade the sound of your fingers punching away at the keypad, or the ping of emails downloading. We all want to stay connected with the outside world, even at the cost of an one to one relationship with our beloved. We risk it because we know they are as tied to the chains of connectivity as we are.

"Are you texting under the table? Oh for crying out loud..."

I doubt we will ever awaken Christmas Day with the knowledge that we have to cast away our mortal coils of electronica, but it would be nice to not to have to check that really funny thread that you started on Facebook once in a while and just let it go.

Image: Ophelia Chong / Call Me