An Incurable Case of the Runs

I suffer from a chronic, incessant and hands-down obnoxious disease. It affects me everyday, whether I am at home or on vacation, at high altitudes or low, watching a movie or sacrificing a baby lamb to the Blackberry gods. Recently it has even begun to affect those around me. I suffer from what I like to call “batterhea.”

Batterhea [bat-uh-ree-uh] can be defined as the constant and streaming loss of battery life. My phone cannot hold its juice, so to speak. A daily melodrama I have to deal with that almost makes me want to kill someone. Whether at work, at home, in my car, a luau, a baptism, a circumcision party, or in line at the DMV–my battery indicator is blood red. My phone drains battery like its going out of style. If battery life were executive bonuses, my phone would be Lehman Brothers Exec–just dishing it out with no consequence. I own so many home/car chargers stashed all over the place that the Justice Department investigated me for trying to corner the market. The whole thing is ridiculous.

Deciding that enough was enough, last week I went to my local, cheery AT&T store for the THIRD time to swap out my Bold for a new one, still convinced it is impossible that a brand new phone that took 23 years to develop and incorporates materials collected from Mars’ surface cannot last me past lunch time. Of course my problem was an isolated one, “Timmy” the manager insisted. “But sir, why the hell is my battery life so crappy?” I asked. Timmy replied that the 3G network can often be “difficult on the battery life.” Great, the whole reason they made the damn phone had just been prescribed as the source of its own downfall (and eventually mine). I though that I could either a) tell Timmy what I thought he could do with his 3G network or b) gouge out Timmy’s right eye with the sharp end of my courtesy plastic holster. Not wanting to cause a scene, I decided to exit quietly. Besides, I had a brand new phone that needed to be charged.