It wasn't until the age of seven that I received my first cellular phone. Up to that point, I was accustomed to holding my ear against plastic toys and the advertised cardboard cutouts from the stores, but this time it was real; with mobile buttons, voicemail, and the intimate breathing of the person on the other line. It my first step into "adulthood" despite the fact that I was limited to using it for emergencies and the like.

I can still remember the design so vividly; a Motorola V150 with the Cingular logo and removable antenna. Back then, flip phones were still decently popular (or at least, I envisioned them to be). I used it to play Billiards and Bejeweled demos, check the time, and occasionally talk to relatives. It stuck with me throughout elementary, junior high, and the majority of high school. Unfortunately, nearing the end of my senior year in high school, I came back to Philadelphia from a trip to London and never found the thing again, despite the fact that I had it right before the plane landed.

Seen this phone? Contact immediately.

Surprisingly, after facing some flippancy and contempt from the stewards who went searching back the plane, I was surprised as to how easily I detached myself from my phone. In addition to its longevity in a world where smartphones have taken over, it was also a good conversation starter ("Oh, you have a flip phone?!") and was a good way for me to avoid using the Internet (I had computers and tablets for those instead). Despite its stability in my life, it was neither mourned by me nor my family members. We simply moved on. And I think a part of me was more than ready to do so, realizing how disadvantaged I was when I couldn't check my email to see that an important event had come up while on the road or some way to pass the time listening to music. For most of my life, I always seemed one grade lower; my composure seemed more middle school in high school, and high school in college. It seemed to be more of another puberty I was going through, and transitioning from a flip phone to a smartphone became one such catalyst for it.

By now, it's probably been about ten months since I've received my mother's hand-me-down iPhone 5. Although now I have a sense of satisfaction that I'm well represented in stores that sell technological merchandise (where iPhone cases and equipment are various, instead of scavaging to find that "perfect" leather case in a thrift store), I cannot help to say that there are some occasional disappointments that I find in using a smartphone. For one, now I find the Internet and social media network inescapable; no matter how I act, it always seems to hover above my head and cloud my judgements when engaging with the real world. Then there's the battery life; some may say that I've overdone it with different applications, but it's a bit alarming to have your phone shut off at the most inopportune of times (in the middle of a conversation, thinking of what clothes to buy, etc.). My phone can drop from a perfect 100 percent to a concerning 63 percent from just five minutes of app use (and this is after several hours of charging). This could considerably be a "solution" to the Internet fix, although stability seems to be replaced with more options available at a given moment.

Then again, this may just be how life is structured to be: a series of random moments, one stopping in favor of another to become some sort of clear path that you can look back on and say, yeah, I knew this would have happened eventually.