I left my iPhone on my nightstand the other night. It's a bad habit of mine but since I got rid of the home phone I still want people to be able to reach me in case of an emergency and I'm not convinced leaving it in the kitchen would catch my attention like the home phone used to.
The beauty of the old home phone was was its simplicity. If somebody called you it rang. If you didn't answer, the caller would be connected to your voicemail. Simple.
The iPhone will also ring. But have you noticed what else it will do when somebody calls your number? Mine flashes and vibrates. I have it set to vibrate but there's nothing I can do about the flashing, it just does that on its own.
I can appreciate these noises, flashes and vibrations are meant to catch your attention. If the phone's in a pocket or nearby the vibration is perfect when the ringer is off. During the course of the day the flash will also tune you in to your phone's status when you're on the go.
However, at 3 o'clock in the morning I've discovered the flashes in particular can be really distracting because they not only occur when somebody's calling you but also when one of your friends updates their Facebook status or follows you on Twitter.
I say the flashes can be really distracting not because they bother me per-se but rather they wake up my wife. While I have no difficulty falling back to sleep Heather cannot shut down again. If she's up, she's up for the day and if that happens during the wee hours of the morning that will mean I won't see a lot of her bright, cheerful smile as often as I'd like.
The other night the phone flashed lighting up the whole bedroom for a split second. I froze just expecting Heather's frenzied reaction. She must have been facing the other way or had the pillow over her head because she didn't stir. I breathed a sigh of relief and said a little prayer of thanks as I reached over to check who could have possibly updated their status at that hour of the morning. It wasn't any of my Facebook friends, rather a new follower on Twitter. The time on my phone read 2:25 a.m.
Two questions popped into my sleepy mind at that point. First, who would be Tweeting at that hour and second, what would make that person want to follow me? Then I noticed the guy was following 23K people. Obviously I was one of the few people in this world who he wasn't following until precisely 2:25 a.m. that very day!
For many social media savvy people the more Twitter followers the better. I appreciate anyone who wants to follow what few Tweets I send out into the world. But when a new follower poses a threat to my wife's sleep, that's where I have to draw the line.
Without thinking I put the phone in my nightstand drawer. As I laid there staring at the ceiling I wondered why I hadn't thought of that in the first place? It could flash all it wanted in there and nobody would lose a wink of sleep. And if some random person felt like following me on Twitter at some ungodly hour of the morning he could follow away and nobody would know until the sun rose.
A simple telecommunications solution to my rather dull but complicated life!
