Cell phones…they have evolved faster than probably anything or anyone else on earth (with the exception of AI). The phones we use today, in my opinion, should be called minicomputers, since they can access the internet and email, as well as text and make voice calls.

(When did the name “voice call” become a thing, anyway? For most of my life, a “call” was a call. Plain and simple.)

What blows my mind is that most of the people who entered college this fall were born in 2008, and the iPhone predates them. But I digress.

Do any of you remember your first cell phone (of any kind)? Mine was actually owned by my parents and they lent it to me while I was away in graduate school. It was a Motorola of some kind and was a very large, bulky thing that I could not fit in my pocket and which made my purse very heavy. Did I mention that it was made in the late 1990s? It only had one warbling ringtone that I could not change.

In 2001, I exchanged that behemoth for a cell phone of my own, a Nokia 5180i. This was the “Nokia brick” that everyone seemingly had around the turn of the millennium. It had the green screen, big buttons that lit up green, small antenna sticking up, and a large choice of ringtones. (I opted for a classical one called “Badinerie.”) I loved that phone. Sadly, in late 2004, I lost it.

I was a latecomer to the smartphone party, as I got my first iPhone in 2015. I loved it to death. It was an iPhone 4. After two and a half years, I got an iPhone 6, and then four years later, my current phone, an iPhone 13 mini. Now I have become one of those phone zombies who take out their phone when they eat alone, wait in line, or cannot sleep. I love being able to do an internet search, watch videos, or text or voice call someone on my phone. (Many people I know use their phones regularly for even more.) And I love that I was able to download my ringtone, which is the chorus of my favorite Boston song.

As I said before, do you remember your first cell phone?