I can fully understand the technologically driven age that we live in. We need to be connected because our workplace, friends and family have societally demanded that of us. That's why I'm only mildly offended when I hang out with either of the two friends that I have and wind up spending the majority of our time together staring at the top of their heads as they're collectively buried in their $600 phones. Milking digital cows and applying Christmas hats to your faux free range chickens for six hours a day in a Facebook farming simulator is obviously more critical to your happiness than proper socialization and the acknowledgment that I'm sitting a mere sixteen inches away. That's okay, too. I can pretty much guarantee that I wouldn't have been interested in what would have been coming out of your mouth. I don't need to know about how the creepy overweight guy that really enjoys pears and smells of kitty litter is undressing you with his eyes. I'm perfectly content enjoying the company of my inner monologue, and I'm real goddamn satisfied with not having to expend energy appearing enthralled.
What I'm not satisified with is being sleep deprived. Which brings me to the one issue that bothers me more than any other as an adult. No, I'm not talking about the politicization of climate change and the subsequent pontification that winds up being drooled about regarding how it will or won't impact our future. I'm pretty positive that Florida dropping to the bottom of the Atlantic is inarguably bad. All that meth and bath salt entering the earth's ocean would be a game changer for sure. I don't know about you, but I enjoy a world with manatees and flamingos. All the dead people would be a bummer too I guess. Anyway, I'm also not talking about the Syrian war that's lead to the migration of nine million displaced and fleeing citizens either. This crisis eclipses both of those trivial gripes. I'm talking about women leaving their cell phones on at night.
I need sleep. You need sleep. Women need sleep. We all need sleep, so why does the finer sex feel the need to keep their Frozen themed iPhone on through the wee morning hours with the volume set at "thousand vuvuzelas." I understand having your alarm set, but is it necessary to have the entirety of the song "Call Me Maybe" play every time a text gets sent your way? The phone's never at a reasonable distance from their cellularly addicted arms either. It's either three rooms away sitting in a timed safe that's located behind a locked door, or it's duct taped to the side of their head with a USB cable directly linking their phone to their prefrontal lobe. How does this help anyone? Does having to cross county lines to get to your phone really help anybody, especially when you consider that the ring is still deafening? It would be nice to silence Carly Rae Jepsen before the third chorus kicks in. Same goes for hiding your mini-tablet in the bed. Will me rolling onto it and waking up with a shard of gorilla glass in my liver really benefit anyone? I'm serious, is it really not plausible to set your phone on the end-table next to the bed where prior to 2010 all alarms used to live? Is it also not reasonable to turn it on alarm mode or off?
Whenever I decided to inevitably spell my own relationship doom by asking my girlfriends to show some sleep related courtesy, I invariably got the retarded response of, "What if it's an emergency?" My response is always, "What if it is?" Will you having your Galaxy Note that's currently doubling as a tampon really fucking matter? Will your Uncle's heart somehow not implode if your phone is resting uncomfortably in your uterus? Will that unexpected head-on collision that your cousin gets into be avoided if you have your phone set to blow out my eardrums at way-too-fucking-early-AM? No, whatever traumatic event that occurred will have already occurred. Being paranoid won't change the fact that your mimaw croaked at the infantile age of 97. She'll be dead whether you wake up at 2:00am or 9:00am. The key is that you'll be able to address the situation in a more level headed manner after receiving those extra six hours of sleep.
Also, let's be honest, how many emergencies have you caught thanks to your phone being on at three in the morning? For most of us, I'm guessing zero. For the more unfortunate people among us, one? Two? Now, how many hours of sleep have you deprived your partner of by having intoxicated idiots who want to plow you shoot you a message when the bar cuts them off? Every other goddamn night. If it's not drunken douchebags attempting to encroach on my girlfriend's vagina, it's that annoying friend that everyone has that incessantly whines about how they're depressed and how no one knows their pain because they're an insomniac. First off, fuck those lonely friends. You know what would solve their loneliness? Sleeping and then joining a bowling team. You can be incontinent, suffering from type III diabetes and have the social skills of a starfish and you could still be accepted by the bowling community. For the lowly price of three gallons of milk you could have a team of chums. That way, you'd have friends, my girlfriend's phone would stop blowing up and I'd get some goddamn peace and quiet between the hours of midnight and sunrise. Oh, and you're not an insomniac. You trying to jam your dick into my relationship when your tired enough to not have self-control doesn't make you an insomniac. It means you're probably unemployed and spend your nights doing 13 hour raids in Destiny. That's not a disorder, that's a lifestyle that involves you wanting to get your dick sucked when your done leveling up your Warlock.
I've been plagued with this shitty bedroom etiquette for the better part of a decade. The worst part about it is whenever I broach the subject I'm immediately branded as a selfish prick. Apparently, wanting a continuous four hours of sleep a night is slothful, but having dudes blow up your phone with their less than innocuous intentions is all good. The arguments I had with my girlfriends always ended with me winning, but me actually losing, because me winning equaled me getting a moratorium placed on my balls. On the rare occasion that a phone related compromise would be struck, it always involved them putting their phone on vibrate. A fate even worse than the ringing. A ring at least suggests a melody. Vibrate simply sounds like someone's repeatedly beating the shit out of my end table with a Louisville Slugger. And that's their idea of striking a deal. That'd be like me saying, "Don't worry, I'll stop cheating on you with other women. I'll just sleep with groups of HIV infected men and not tell you."
Just turn your fucking phone off. Any call of any importance can be made in the morning. We managed crises before cell phones, and short of a nuclear winter, I think we can survive and even thrive in what would be a utopic world of well rested souls.
