I should have played the Lottery last week. Because on Thursday, February 22nd I was one of the lucky 75,000 or so AT&T customers whose iPhones suddenly became thousand-dollar paperweights. The company has a couple hundred million subscribers at least. As a victim with those kind of odds, I should have picked six numbers and been rolling in dough right now. But I didn’t. And let me tell you, being a winner in that outage sweepstakes was not nearly as fun as I imagine being an instant millionaire might be.

My day started just fine. I watched the morning news and saw the report about possible service disruption. I dutifully checked my phone, and all was well. I had an eye doctor appointment scheduled for 9:30 A.M. Since I’d only been to that doc’s particular office once before and it was in a part of town with which I was unfamiliar, I did what I usually do when driving – typed the address into my iPhone’s GPS app. Everything worked great, and 15 minutes later (including at least six or seven turns on unknown streets along the way) I pulled up to the building entrance right on time.

After checking in at the front desk, I sat in the outer lobby and composed a text to a lifelong friend of mine who was celebrating her birthday. But when I tried to send it, I got a message saying it didn’t go through. So, I tried to send it again. Same result.

It was then I noticed in the upper right-hand corner of the phone screen, where the “V” lives that shows signal strength, that it simply said SOS. Hmmm. I’d never seen that before. I tried another text. Same result. I tried to Google something. Nothing. Tried to access email. No go. Tried to call my wife. Nope. I had an absolutely dead and useless phone.

Alas, I ended up being in the eye doctor’s office for two hours. It wasn’t pretty because I sat in an exam room for a solid hour before anyone came in. Just sat there. With nothing to do. Couldn’t access anything on my phone and found out later that this particular office quit subscribing to magazines during Covid.

Someone finally came in and put drops in my eyes. After another hour went by, the doc finally made an appearance. He stayed for two minutes and twelve seconds. (This was only a follow-up visit, and not a regular exam.) Turns out the office was short of help. Do ya think? Not that anyone bothered to tell me that.

I was thus in just a swell mood when I got back in my car, only to find out that my phone STILL didn’t work. And I suddenly realized I didn’t have a clue as to where I was, and I certainly didn’t know how to get back home. I definitely hadn’t memorized the route to the office – I just relied on GPS, as usual. I was totally unfamiliar with the part of town I was in, didn’t have a map (who needs those anymore?), and couldn’t call anyone.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I did remember which way I had turned to get in there. So, I did the opposite. Good start. But it quickly went downhill from there. I ended up driving by landmarks I know I’ve never seen before.

Finally, I saw a road sign for the interstate. “Well,” I thought to myself, “I live pretty close to that. I’ll just follow those signs.” Around 45 minutes later, I arrived home. But not before enjoying just a wonderful tour of the area that included crossing a bridge and being stuck in construction traffic.

Being without that phone was a totally helpless feeling. Without my magical lifeline, I didn’t feel part of the civilized world. If for some inexplicable reason you’d like to share my experience, go ahead and leave your phone at home the next time you go somewhere you’ve never been before. I’m reasonably certain you won’t like the feeling. (Don’t tell the phone companies, but whatever they’re charging for their service, it’s worth it.)

And speaking of not telling people, I think we ought to keep this outage thing our little secret here in the U.S. Because if Vlad “the Mad” Putin ever wanted to take us over (after he’s through with Europe), no bombs are necessary. All he has to do is create a massive cyber-attack on our phones. We won’t even know how to get out of our own driveways, let alone attack back.

©MMXXIV. William J. Lewis, III – Freelance Writer