My Transgender Phone.

I was going to write about the UGA/Ga Tech game that I attended over the weekend, but it was pretty uneventful. Another year, another loss for the nerds. Moving along...

About three years ago, I decided it was time to upgrade my phone. At the time, I had the giant blue Nokia phone that everyone had, except by this point most normal human beings had moved on to smaller, cooler ones. I got tired of lugging around a cellular device that would put Zack Morris' behemoth to shame. Plus, small children with plastic cell phones full of bubble gum were making fun of me.

So I headed to the Cingular store with a few requirements.

1) I wanted it to be small enough to fit in my pocket.

2) I wanted to be able to see who was calling me without opening it.

3) I didn't want to spend a lot of money.

I found a really small Samsung phone with an outside screen that was fairly cheap, so I bought that badboy and brought it home.

Little did I know, that badboy was actually a girl. Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George buys glasses with ladies' frames? Yeah. That was pretty much what happened. Except one of my friends didn't shout racial slurs from a comedy club stage years later. But other than that, pretty much the same.

That outside screen that I wanted so badly? Well, it happened to double as a mirror. Probably useful for applying makeup. Not so useful for doing manly things, like trimming nose hairs or getting girls to actually speak to you.

The small size? Well, it turns out it wasn't just small. It was cute. Every tiny fiber of this phone's being was built to be cute. It rings and purple, blue and yellow lights flash on the screen. You charge it and a tiny duck walks across the screen, announcing the extremely high dosages of estrogen emitting from my little silver friend.

Perhaps I could redeem myself with normal ringtones and wallpapers? Nope. It's all yawning bunnies with tulips behind their ears, kittens on tricycles juggling even smaller kittens and happy little songs about puppies and weddings and puppy weddings.

I had to spend half a fortune injecting my phone with some semblance of manhood. For three years, my ringtone blared "Feelin' like a pimp, then go on brush ya shoulders off." As if to scream to the world, "I am a man's phone! Treat me as such!" I was afraid to change songs, because if I did, any slight dip in testosterone levels might have caused my phone to actually grow breasts.

I downloaded UGA-related wallpapers for my background to take the place of happy sunshine-covered daisy fields. I was essentially giving my phone a sex change, whether it wanted it or not. And we were ok with it. It wasn't always easy, but I actually grew to like my phone. Even though it was confused about its orientation, it held up well. That is, until last night.

I know it's gone to a better place. A place where people won't judge it. A place I hope we can all go one day.

And now it's time for a new phone. And you can rest assured that I won't make the same mistake twice. My contract is over, so I can choose from a plethora of free phones, which is good, because I'm a cheap bastard. I have my pick of tons of phones that even Paul Bunyan would consider a little too manly.

I've made up my mind that the RAZR is the way to go. It has everything I'm looking for. It knows exactly what it is. And as I now go to the Cingular website to order it, I see that the free RAZR I want is available in only one color...

Pink.